


Know You All Over Again

by PoppyAlexander



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU Where the Series Ended on the Tarmac, And All That Blah Blah Blah S4 Stuff I've Blocked From My Memory Seems Irrelevant Here, Anger, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ex Sex, In Case You're Wondering Why, M/M, Mary is Moriarty, Post-Break Up, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Tension, Therapy, sex with the ex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-18 03:22:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 35,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13673217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: After five good years, one difficult one, and six months that were hell, John and Sherlock live apart but still share custody of seven-year-old Rosie. With therapy, supportive friends, and those inevitable dance recitals and open school days forcing them into each other's paths again and again, anger and bitterness fade, leaving space for a new view of each other across the divide.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is going to end up longish, 30k - 60k words/20ish chapters?, and there is no posting schedule; I'll just post chapters as I finish them. This is my diversion from another project. . .my side-piece. . .so I won't promise it will be quick, but you know me by now. I never leave anything unfinished.

John pressed the buzzer while Rosie stretched up on her toes, extending her arm over her head, trying to reach the knocker.

“Did you think you were taller than last time?” he asked, aware of the tightness of his teeth even as he joked.

“Maybe,” she replied, the shrug audible.

“Keep trying, I suppose.”

She sank into her usual posture, school rucksack on her back and the purple overnight bag sagging beside her feet. There were clothes and pyjamas and toys and books enough for her upstairs, but it seemed she had new favourites every week. Things she wanted close by, to remind her of John while she visited. Things to show off to Sherlock. This time there was a book about rocks she’d borrowed from the school library, two fashion dolls and their own little bag full of clothes and tiny shoes and miniscule hair brush, and the little flannel blanket she’d dragged around behind her for the best part of her first four years. John had seen it rumpled up in the bag when he’d put in her glittering pink trainers (lately she only wanted to wear rain boots), but hadn’t mentioned it or asked her about it. Let her find comfort where she needed to.

The black door swung wide and there stood Mrs Hudson, with the roots of her hair newly touched up to cover the white, in a green dress spattered with coin-sized triangles of pink and yellow. John twisted his mouth into a smile.

“Mrs H,” he said with a nod.

“How are you, my dears? Come in. Come in!”

John frowned and gave a tight shake of his head. Rosie was hefting up her overnight bag into the crook of her elbow. John turned toward her and opened his arms. “Do I get a hug?”

Rosie steadied the bag and leaned against his middle, arms around him as much as she could manage while weighed down on one side.

“Love you, Dadda,” she said. Another echo of their past; the name she called him before she began to worry what her playfriends might think, when all of them had already graduated to calling their fathers _Dad_.

“Love you, Rose, down to your toes.” He dipped down to plant a kiss in the part of her hair. “Behave. I’ll pick you up after school on Monday.”

She managed the bag, swaying slightly, and Mrs Hudson stepped aside for her to pass. As Rosie thumped up the stairs in her rubber galoshes, John heard her holler, “I’m home!” He cleared his throat to keep himself hearing whatever reply might come from the upstairs flat.

To Mrs Hudson he said, “There’s a note in her rucksack for him. Just. _heh-hem_. About the calendar. Next few weeks. Could you maybe make sure—?”

“I’ll mention it,” Mrs Hudson said, and her face was doing that thing where she was about to say something disapproving and piteous, so John flashed another tight-lipped grin at her and waved his hand a bit.

“Thanks for that. I’ve got to get to the clinic. Enjoy your day.” He cleared his throat again, and allowed himself to turn his back. He heard the door shut with a sound thump as he marched up the pavement toward the tube station.

 

“Ah, Watson! Excellent. First: Are you hungry?”

Rosie dropped her overnight bag beside the hall tree on the landing, shook her way out of the straps of her rucksack and her cardigan all in one go and let them fall. She ran to where Sherlock sat on the back of his leather armchair with bare feet on the seat cushion, and tugged at his arm for him to lean sideways. When he was within catching distance, she kissed his cheek.

“Nope, Dad even said I ate a good breakfast,” she answered, and flopped onto the red armchair opposite him. Sherlock could see her eyeing the threadbare spot on its left arm, the twitch of her hand as she denied herself fulfillment of the urge to pick and scratch at it, to make a proper hole in the fabric.

“Are you tired? Need sleep?”

“No. I only got up before breakfast and then got dressed and came here. I haven’t been awake all day yet!” She gave him an intense look that implied he was asking a very silly question indeed.

“Have you any need for the bathroom facilities?”

She looked up to her left, checking in with herself. “Maybe a little? But not yet.”

Having ascertained that all her bodily needs were addressed and met—he’d remind her about the bathroom again in thirty minutes—Sherlock was ready to move on to the more diverting matters at hand.

“We have a heady decision before us, Watson. Consider the options carefully. Ready?”

She nodded her blonde head vigorously, which only served to emphasise the fact of her hair growing straighter and darker with each passing season. Sherlock felt something like disappointment about this change in her, though he could not properly explain why he should feel anything about it other than interested. He’d spent the past seven years observing continual changes in everything about her except the smell of her neck, requiring him to form a new set of deductions daily—sometimes every few hours. Lately he wondered what interim transformations he had missed at the in-between times, and the wondering was edged in lavender-grey.

“Option one,” he said, and got to his feet, pacing like a school lecturer laying out a complex problem. “The zoo. The weather favours fewer of the animals lingering inside their enclosures—neither too warm nor too cold. Additionally, there is a temporary exhibit of spiders I understand is informative as well as mildly terrifying.”

Rosie shuddered dramatically and let out one of her excited half-squeals. Sherlock reminded her not to rush to judgment by holding up one finger.

“Option two, the cinema. Personally, I’m quite desperate to see the sequel to one of our mutual favourites— _Zootopia_ —which is well-reviewed as both hilarious and heart-warming. Bonus datum in favour: sweets and popcorn for lunch.” He squared himself to Rosie, her boot-clad feet hanging well above the rug and her head resting well below the back edge of the chair, and clasped his hands at his chin.  He narrowed his eyes. “Which will it be?”

Rosie slithered and rolled from the chair in the bendy manner of soft-boned children and dashed to her rucksack. “First I want to show you.”

Sherlock resumed a seat in his chair, this time properly, and crossed one thigh over the other. Rosie was unzipping her pack even as she approached, reached in and drew out a sheet of yellow paper with a crayon-drawing on it.

“What’s this, then?” he asked, taking it from her and examining it carefully. The drawing appeared to be of a tall person wearing ear muffs and holding a cigarette lighter, and another, smaller person with long, pink hair with a speech bubble barely containing the phrase, _You are under arrest!_

Rosie stood close by his side and pointed. “This is you on a case about stolen cats and guinea pigs, and this is me helping you find the clues.”

“What’s this?” He pointed to the ear muffs.

“Your hat you let me wear.” Sherlock had handed off the deerstalker he’d accidentally made into his signature—despite Savile Row suits, an endless string of blue mufflers wound around his neck, and his good coat—for Rosie to keep in her dress-up trunk when she’d begun to toddle. Rosie pointed to the drawing’s hands. “This is your magnifier.”

“Not a cigarette lighter, then.”

“If you smoke cigarettes, I’ll divorce you,” Rosie said automatically. Sherlock regretted that he and John had ever so freely shared that particular running joke in her presence.

“I promise I will not smoke cigarettes. Are you a police officer? Putting the petnapper under arrest?”

“I’m your assist-it. You need one.”

“I do indeed,” Sherlock agreed, and forced a grin. “It’s a fine picture. I’ll tack it up?” Without waiting for a reply, Sherlock crossed to the fire and pinned the drawing up on the wall by the mantel, amidst an array of letters and photos he’d been lately rearranging, for a case that was no more than a three, but which paid a lot. “So, which will it be: zoo or _Zootopia_?”

 

Turning the key in the lock still felt like breaking into a stranger’s house—the pale blue door and the stack of buzzer-buttons with strange names beside them, the numbered post boxes and flickering overhead light—a sense of wrongness that was only amplified by the fact of going in alone. Being parted from Rosie for days and nights at a time left John with phantom-limb syndrome—frequent, frantic moments of panic before he remembered where she was. Safe and sound at the place he knew she still thought of as home. This strange-smelling place with its filmy window curtains was her home now, too, but despite John’s attempts to convince at least himself of its long-term if not permanent status, he could see that for Rosie it was merely a placeholder: a life-size diorama of a home, not the real thing.

It felt less like a real home than ever, on those nights when John returned from his clinic work to the hum-filled silence of a flat with nobody in it.

John imagined some men in his position might exhale relief at a few nights of quiet and time to themselves. Without Rosie there to cook a meal for, he fried an egg and ate it on toast, then left his plate in the sink, unwashed. He kept the telly on just for the noise. He made a pass around the room chucking toys into their crates and baskets, standing books spine-out on the little bookshelf. The only glimmer of goodness he felt in her absence was when he dropped himself into the bed—a proper bed  tucked into an alcove that may once have been a cupboard, the only bed in the flat—instead of onto his usual bunk-post on the sofa just barely long enough for him to stretch across. Falling asleep was difficult; but the sleep when it came was thicker and more enduring.

He’d have lain on a bed of nails if it meant Rosie slept every night in the same room.

 

“Would you like to call Dad and say good night, Watson?”

“No, we can say good morning, tomorrow.”

“Sure?”

“I’m sure. Will you do the alphabet?”

Rosie’s feet had emerged from her rain boots pale and clammy and wrinkled, her socks damp with perspiration that smelled of absolutely nothing. She dressed for bed, self-reliant but still unself-conscious, delivering continuous patter while Sherlock fluffed her pillow and pulled back the bedding to make an envelope for her. A tilt of his head and a comically expectant look from Sherlock reminded her to drop her clothes into the round pink laundry hamper. Sherlock didn’t rush her; it was the weekend and so the schedule could be left a bit of breathing room. Once she’d arranged cuddly toys and blankets to her liking, put on socks then taken them off a few minutes later, and yawned twice, Sherlock assumed his station on the edge of the mattress and opened their book. Of course it had been several days since they’d last read, so he had to reverse a bit and remind them both of recent story-events. While he read out the chapter, Rosie wordlessly guided her fashion doll through some basic balletic choreography.

Once the reading was done and Rosie had been offered one last chance to call John—Sherlock’s reaction a rich blend of guilty relief and rueful compassion at her second refusal—she turned onto her stomach and Sherlock brushed her hair aside so he could trace shapes and figures over the slight expanse of her back with his fingertips. They’d always called it _doing the alphabet_ , as it had begun as him tracing letters for her to guess, though over time it was much less structured. He practiced his Arabic, which was shockingly rusty, right to left across her shoulder blades, then slowly followed a serpentine route down her spine. After a few minutes he could sense the sinking of her slender arms toward the mattress, and dipped his head to see her mouth had fallen slightly open and her eyes were closed and still. She had John’s same long, gold-blonde eyelashes.

He let his hand come to rest cradled across the broadest part of her back, feeling the rise and fall of her ribcage. John had once confessed he couldn’t bear to feel her heartbeat against his hand, didn’t like to watch her breathe for too long, because it made him feel helpless in the face of her fragility. Sherlock, though, had always admired her resilience and sturdiness, the way she lengthened and toughened with each passing week. She was the most remarkable machine he had ever encountered. He counted thirty of her breaths, then pulled up the quilt and switched off the lamp. Even though it had been nearly three years since she’d routinely woken in the night, Sherlock left the door open just enough to hear her.

 

By the day of John and Rosie’s move, he and Sherlock had already been avoiding each other’s company for over a week, sending tersely worded texts and emails only when unavoidably necessary. When one knew the other was in, he made a point of staying out. The last time they’d been in the same room for more than a minute or two was when they’d set Rosie on the sofa between them and John explained that he and Sherlock just weren’t able to get on anymore, even though they’d tried, and so it would be nicer for all three of them if they had another flat—one for Dad, and one for Sherlock, and _both_ for you, darling—instead of going on living together and always arguing, too often feeling grouchy and sad. After the expected questions ( _Will I stay at my school? Yes. Who will take me there and pick me up at home time? One of us always will, just depends on the day.  Can’t you just say you’re sorry and accept the apologies and then nobody needs to move house? I’m sorry, darling; sometimes for grown-ups there are things that can’t be apologised for_.), Rosie had drifted and shifted away to find less troublesome scenarios, toys and the telly, and then later a trip to the park. She asked Sherlock to take her.

They’d arranged a schedule, three nights with each parent, with flexibility. The school summer holiday was coming up, but after that there wasn’t much to negotiate until Christmas, _think it over and let me know; we’ll sort it out_. Sherlock had packed half her clothes, a box of books, a box of toys— _she’ll just be wanting something different every week anyway so let her put the ones she wants for the next couple days in her rucksack for now_ —packed her brush but kept her comb, left her toddler-era comfort-blanket folded on the foot of her bed, which she left, and then three weeks later, took. Mrs Hudson gave her a little tea party while the men with the van jogged up and down the stairs six times. Sherlock leaned against the kitchen worktop, tugging his lip. John rubbed his fingers and thumb against his headache spot.

“I hear your Dad’s flat has a little shop underneath, just like we have here.”

“Not _just_ like it.”

“No, but differences create interest.  I wonder how long before the counter-girl there knows your order off by heart.”

“Probably not for a month.”

“I imagine perhaps less time than that, if you wear something memorable. Your red jumper with the pigeon on it.”

“It’s an owl!” She giggled, and Sherlock smiled. He reached for her and she squeezed him around the neck hard enough to break his heart.

“I can’t wait to see you again, Watson.”

“Don’t miss me, Sherlock. I’ll be _right. back_.”

“I’ll do my best.” He smoothed her hair, then her shoulder. Her fingernails were glittery pink. “Go on. Dad’s waiting for you downstairs.”

John’s smile was mostly genuine when she appeared on the stairs, one hand sliding along the rail, her rucksack slung over just one shoulder.

“Ready to go?” He guided her with a hand on her shoulder, always slightly in front of him where he could see her. “Wait until you see the new stuff I got for your bed. Sheets and four pillows, two blankets, and a yellow patchwork quilt for the top.” He rambled, talking up the one-and-a-half room flat the entire Tube ride until he’d surely built up her expectations to the point where she could not but be disappointed when she saw it.

“You forgot to say goodbye to Sherlock!” she gasped suddenly, as they walked up the pavement toward the building.

“It’s all right. We said goodbye earlier.” John tried not to sound as grim as he felt, talking about Sherlock, and inhaled, exhaled, let his shoulders fall for the first time in what seemed like years. In a lifetime of starting over, it was the first time John had made the decision for himself that it was time to begin anew. It was good. He could breathe. The rest would shake out. His girl had grit and good wits. She’d be just fine.

*

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

“How’s Rosie?” Molly asked, and Sherlock felt her watching him from the other side of the lab bench. She never wore her white coat anymore, and she’d had her hair cut up near her jaw. Clicking heels. Matching pullover and cardigan and a single pearl on a fine gold chain. The feminine uniform of middle management.

He didn’t look away from the electron microscope’s screen, displaying the latest fashion in influenza viruses. “Finally taller than one of her schoolmates,” he reported. “I suspect some degree of malnutrition in the rival, though; he’s a recently arrived refugee. No doubt he will surpass her by the first of the year.”

“I was asking more about if she’s well.”

“Very well.”

“Settled in with all the new routines then. . .the visitations. . .?”

“It’s been nearly four months,” he replied, not really an answer. After a moment’s expectant silence from Molly, who carried on staring, now adding the torment of an expression of sympathetic concern, Sherlock added, “Open school day coming up. She’s made a tri-fold paperboard display on the life cycle of a daisy.”

“That sounds lovely. Will you go?”

Sherlock hummed in the vague negative. “ _Mn_. I’ll let John have it.”

“Can you not. . .Is it like that? That you can’t be in the same place together?”

“Not that we can’t. Only that we haven’t had to.”

“You don’t expect it to go well? I’m sure you’d both be fine. For Rosie.”

“Thank you, Molly, for the flu,” Sherlock said with finality, and fetched his coat off the back of his chair as rose to leave. “And do let me know if you start getting a raft of auto-erotic asphyxiations; I suspect a serial killer haunting the underground sex clubs.”

“Are there?” Molly’s piqued interest sounded amusingly close to arousal. “Underground sex clubs?”

Sherlock only laid a finger against his lips, gave Molly a wink, tried not to notice that she never blushed or stammered anymore when he did so, and went to beg a cigarette from a porter. He’d be safe to smoke it; Rosie wouldn’t be home for two days.

 

_TXT from JW: Why aren’t you answering your phone? I’ve called you three times.  
The clinic is mad today. Can you go to Rosie’s school thing?_

_TXT from JW: Get back to me ASAP. Trying to get out of here but doesn’t look promising._

_TXT from JW: ???_

_TXT from JW: Soonest I can leave here is half-one. I’ll never make it. Can you be there?_

_TXT from JW: Leaving now. Hopelessly late but I’ll do what I can.  
We’ll talk later about ignoring calls and texts._

Sherlock had been six stories underground—needling his brother—for the best part of three hours; he’d had to surrender his phone at the first security checkpoint. It wasn’t until he emerged onto the pavement that he found the string of increasingly edgy texts from John. He threw up an arm and shout-summoned a cab, barked at the driver that if he valued his life he’d put his foot down hard and get them to Cooper’s Green Road as quickly as possible.

_I’ll be there in seven minutes.  
I wasn’t ignoring your texts. You should have texted my brother._

_Four minutes away now. Surely I won’t be the only parent just slightly late._

Sherlock’s fingers jigged agitation against the door handle. There was an alley, unfenced car park, residential road under construction—

“Stop! I’ll go from here.”

He legged it into the alley, jogged diagonally across the car park, came panting up the steps of the school. Another late-arriving parent was just ahead of him, and held the door.

“Didn’t think you got my texts.”

John. Frowning with his entire being. His shoulders and spine and even his knees were in on it, and his clenched fist was so far in on it Sherlock sidestepped, just in case.

“I was under Parliament,” Sherlock huffed.

“The fuck—?” John caught himself, flashed a quick smile at the senior citizen at the front desk. “Science thing?” he asked, false casual.

The desk-woman pointed. “In the gym.”

“The _hell_ were you doing under—” John began, muttering between tight teeth as they strode down the corridor past closed classroom doors. “No, forget it, I don’t care.”

“You can always text Mycroft.”

“Mycroft is not _in_ this,” John scolded, as ever implying that Sherlock was failing so spectacularly in his role as one-of-just-us-two that, well, he _would_ make messy suggestions they involve others. The buzz and hum of a busy, echoing room quickly increased in volume as the two rounded a corner. John held up his hand. “Shut up, nevermind. Anyway, she wasn’t expecting you; you can go.”

“I’m already here.”

Sherlock thrust his hands into his coat pockets and stepped around John to go in first, a maneuver he knew was childish and unnecessary, but which put an upward tic in the corner of his lip nonetheless. There were children taller than Rosie and her Year Two colleagues standing by, looking puffed up with themselves; one of them passed Sherlock a sheet of green paper featuring a hand-drawn, top-down view of the room with the participants’ names in rows of unevenly-sized, not-quite-square boxes. A momentary glance at it, and Sherlock strutted ahead, not minding whether John followed.

Rosie was in the midst of an animated explanation of her display to some other child’s mother and grandmother, and Sherlock stood back, waiting his turn to be acknowledged.

“It also needs wind and pollinators,” she said. “With only water and sunlight it will grow, but it can’t make usable seeds on its own.”

“That’s true, and not something you often see in life-cycle presentations. Thank you for sharing it.” The mother and grandmother smiled, and Rosie’s chin went a bit higher.

“Yours is far and away the best project, Watson; what prize have you won?”

Rosie giggled and moved to receive Sherlock’s offered hug. “It’s not the best one,” she said. “Have you even seen them all?”

“I spent over an hour typing and printing those bullet-points,” John protested; as had been their habit for far too long, they spoke to Rosie instead of each other, forcing her into simultaneous, perpendicular conversations. “It’s definitely the best one.”

“It’s just that you type quite slowly,” Rosie grinned.

“Not to do with your illegible printing, then.”

“Nope.”

“Hello, Dr Watson. Mr Holmes, nice to see you.” Rosie’s teacher. Late twenties, dark hair caught hastily behind her neck in a loose chignon, mascara enough to make up for the fact of no lipstick. “I think this is the first time I’ve seen you at the same time, together.”

“They’re not together,” Rosie interrupted, always comfortable inserting herself into adult conversation. “They’re divorced.”

“We’re not divorced, darling; we were never married.”

Sherlock looked at John for the first time since they’d met at the front door _. Aha. John’s shagging the teacher._

“We’re—”

“Separated.”

“—broken up.” John did the thing with his hands behind his back, looking down at his own fidgeting foot. _No; hadn’t shagged her. Fancied her. Wanked to fantasies of her, frequently and exclusively._

“So. . .” Sherlock put in, twisting up the false smile everyone fell for. “Open to novel inquiries.” He tilted his head toward John, who grimaced. The teacher’s pinched smile made her look mildly alarmed.

“ _Sherlock_.” Sotto voce, through gritted teeth.

“Watson, my apologies, but I only stopped in to have a look at the best display in the room—those in the know might even say, in the _world_ —on my way to meet with a client. You understand.” Sherlock squatted down and his left knee made a troubling crunching noise but he ignored it to receive Rosie’s embrace. “I’ll see you Sunday morning.” Regaining his feet, Sherlock nodded at the teacher, who quickly excused herself to attend to another student, far down the row.

“About Sunday. I’ll text you.”

“Something?”

“Ah, I’ll just text you.”

“Very well.”

 

John subscribed to an app that allowed him to meet virtually with a therapist, via text message. They had two scheduled, forty-minute chats per week, and she made herself available for check-ins and follow-ups in between. So far John had explained what had brought him to her: that he had been with a male partner on and off for about ten years, the last seven raising his daughter together, and that he wanted to be sure he was handling the changes in the best way for her. He’d tried to be fair to them both when summarising the break-up, but knew in the end he’d put nearly all the blame on Sherlock and spared precious little for himself. He explained their visitation arrangement, which amounted to shared custody with Rosie’s time split evenly between their two homes. When the therapist had asked if the child’s mother had any part in her life, John had left it at, “None,” and she didn’t press for details. Most people reckoned the total absence of a mother from a child’s life implied horrors better left out of polite conversation, or assumed that he and Sherlock had adopted Rosie together. He imagined the therapist, who was called Denise, likely fell into one of these two camps.

_It occurred to me after our last chat I hadn’t asked your partner’s name._

John was certainly not going to type only-one-in-the-world _Sherlock_ and muck up the whole discussion with their pseudo-semi-celebrity. After only the briefest of hesitations, John replied, _His name is William. I saw him for the first time since I moved out, just yesterday._

_Where was that?_

_School thing. I was held up at work, texted to ask him to go in my place. Ended up, we were both there. Both late, but my daughter didn’t mind._

_And how was it, spending time with him? I assume you interacted._

He considered Sherlock’s insistence on staying when John tried to wave him off. His imperious way of walking ahead of John. The weird exchange with the teacher, making everyone squirm with hints about what he thought he _knew_.

_Didn’t speak to each other, really. Didn’t look at each other. It’s easier to talk to my daughter, in each other’s hearing. Been like that a long time, and it’s part of what made me know it was time to go. She shouldn’t be a projection screen for us to avoid discussing our problems, which is how it felt._

_How it felt at the school, or how it felt when you were living together?_

_Both, but I meant when we were together._

_Lots of couples do that, talk at children either about their partner, or in front of their partner, to make points without direct discussion._

_We made digs at each other that way. “I know William lets you get away with that; he’s the fun one. But with me the rules rule.” That sort of thing._

_Right. Did it feel equally unpleasant at the school event? Talking to her instead of to each other._

_Not nearly as bad. It was more about keeping the focus on her accomplishment._

_Perhaps for the best, then._

_Right, it was fine. A short meeting, started out poorly because I was harried about being late, annoyed he’d missed my calls/texts, but it ended up all right. Sort of confirmed we do better apart. We were more civil to each other than during the whole last year of our relationship. Even faking civility is preferable to how it was then._

_Sometimes meeting in public spaces like that helps. Any plans to spend time together, the three of you, again?_

_No. None. Seems a bit early for that, still. OK for a ten minute meet-up in public but I’m sure he’s still just as angry as I often am. I’m sure he blames me and finds fault._

_You blame him and find fault?_

_If we didn’t, I don’t suppose we’d have broken up my daughter’s home, would we. There’s plenty to go around. We’re both to blame. Anyway, as I said, the fact we were able to be in a room together without shouting or cutting comments just lets me know we’re where we need to be._

_Good then. It’s possible to work on resolving feelings about the end of your relationship, on your own, and finding closure such that you can have a functioning interaction with him as co-parents. It’s not always necessary for ex-partners to process all of that together. Sometimes, actually, it’s better for each to do his own work, because it’s so easy to fall back on old bad habits: arguments, silences, unproductive discussion, and so on. So if that’s how you might like to go forward during our chats, it’s certainly something we can look at._

_Thanks, that about perfectly describes my opinion on the matter. I’m most concerned with my daughter’s well-being, of course, and sorting out what’s best for her._

_Naturally. And that’s a healthy focus. It’s always better for children to have more people that love them in their lives, so it’s admirable that you and William have made an arrangement that helps her have continuity and lets her feel secure and loved._

_Right. I do want her to have stability. Really glad I got to debrief on this first encounter with him, post-breakup. This was helpful._

_I’m glad. We’ll chat again on Monday then. Take care, John._


	3. Chapter 3

_TO: SH@scienceofdeduction.com_   
_FROM: John_Watson@UKFreeMail.com_   
_RE: Sunday_

_Rosie has two things for Sunday. Lunchtime I’ve got to take her to a birthday party. Then in the evening—don’t ask me why, seems Sunday is the new Saturday for kids’ activities or something, I’m seeing a trend—there’s the info night for her ballet school. I need to sign all the paperwork, so it’s just easier for me to take her. By the time we’re done it’ll be past her bedtime, and it’s closer to mine so I’ll just bring her home. You can pick her up Monday after school._

_My clinic schedule this week means my days off are going to be Tuesday and Wednesday, so I’ll pick her up Tuesday from school. Then back to the 3/3 schedule—Friday night at yours and so on._

Of course, John himself was no fan of kiddy parties either, but after the first half-dozen or so, it became their default position that he escorted Rosie to all of them. Sherlock never volunteered, and on the few occasions when Rosie asked that he take her, John had let him off easy, making his excuses for him so Rosie didn’t feel rejected. And so it had always been John who stood around small-talking with people—mostly mums, at that—whose names he rarely cared to remember, critiquing the classroom teachers and cluing each other in on the least crowded rainy-day playspaces, reminding the children to keep their hands to themselves, exhorting them to eat something decent before pouring sugar over it, practically begging them to please, darling, I know you’re excited but you must stop screaming. It was John who always came home with his head aching, and who inevitably dealt with the high-pitched, tremulous sugar surge followed by the inevitable tantrumming crash.

And as for the paperwork, there was nothing for it. He was Rosie’s only legal parent, must always be the one to sign whatever agreement he was presented, promising not to sue in the event grievous bodily harm came to his child. Seven years of being primary signatory— _name: John Watson, relationship: parent_ —had eventually transformed, though, from Just What Must Be Done into repeating, stinging reminders that Sherlock would only ever be listed in the secondary space. _Name: Sherlock Holmes, relationship: family friend_.

John didn’t remember when he’d stopped carefully identifying Sherlock as Rosie’s second parent—anywhere not requiring a legal definition—but had lately become acutely aware that somewhere along the way, Sherlock had been demoted. Not that Sherlock knew any of it—neither how careful John had been, nor that his status had changed; he never even had to see those kinds of papers. Tedious, redundant, child’s primary language, allergies, health concerns, list of emergency contacts. . .the same forms year after year at school, for tennis, for dance class, at the clinic. Having a child was an endless spool of paperwork to be filled out in triplicate. All of it, every year, hastily hand-written by _John Watson, parent_.

Despite the fact Rosie had always been quite loud about having two parents, and would tell anyone who listened, “Just like you’ve got a mum and a dad, I’ve got a dad and a _other_ dad,” Sherlock had never asserted himself as Rosie’s other parent, never claimed her.  Sherlock had changed the nappies and learned from online videos how to plait her hair, trained himself to check in with her needs—and meet them—at regular intervals, ran her ragged at the park when her seemingly endless energy needed draining, and sat long hours bored and exhausted on the edge of her sickbed. But he’d never really made her his. He had never even asked.

_TO: John_Watson@UKFreemail.com_   
_FROM SH@scienceofdeduction.com_   
_RE: RE: Sunday_

_All fine if it must be that way. Has Watson signed off on it, though?_

_—SH_

_TO: SH@scienceofdeduction.com_   
_FROM: John_Watson@UKFreemail.com_   
_RE: RE: RE: Sunday_

_Doesn’t serve to have her think she can make the schedule. Too many moving parts and it could only lead to disappointment. Better we just sort it ourselves. She understands sometimes there will be unavoidable changes._

_Let me know if anything changes on your end._

Sherlock entertained a momentary impulse to throw himself on the children’s party grenade, but ultimately couldn’t bring himself to; he’d barely tolerated the parties John had arranged for Rosie’s own birthdays. The ballet school meeting might have been manageable—he and Rosie could give each other ink tattoos on their knuckles and forearms to pass the time—but if there were waivers and guarantees to sign, it was true John must do it. And there was flexibility in their arrangement just for things like this, and for John’s clinic hours changing, and for those times Sherlock was tied up on a case. But his three nights (including one precious weekend day) had just been sloughed down to one, without discussion, without even the courtesy of apologies or solicitation of his agreement. And so in the end it felt really rather not-all-right, and he wanted to protest. But without any real standing to do so, beneficiary as he was of John’s generosity, he had no choice but to leave it as was and carry on.

 

“I’m hungry,” Rosie complained, shaking her rucksack off her shoulders and thrusting it at Sherlock. She was always out of sorts Monday afternoons; the smooth transition back to school after the relief-filled exhalation of a weekend was not a trick she had mastered.

“Can you wait until we’re home, or will you expire imminently?” Sherlock asked, unzipping her bag and perusing its contents. “Have you got anything edible in here?”

“ _Nooo!_ And I can’t wait.” She was working up a whinge, her face set in a narrow-eyed frown.

“Come on, then,” Sherlock said, and swept her onward with his hand on her shoulder. “The shop up the road. No sweets, though; don’t ask.”

“I _wo_ -on’t!” She stomped dramatically, and Sherlock brought up the rear. “I need a drink, too. Not water. I want Orangina.”

“Yes, fine.”

“Stop saying it like that! Use a nicer tone,” she demanded.

“I said yes, Watson,” Sherlock defended, in the same or at least a very similar tone, a sort of sighing surrender designed to placate her, which failed to fulfill its mission.

“You said it like _yesss. . .fiiine_. . .” She dramatically sloped her shoulders to illustrate.

“This argument is illogical and I withdraw. Here we are.” He pulled open the door and Rosie trudged to where she knew the crunchy snacks were. She chose crisps but Sherlock insisted on something with nuts for protein, only selling it to her when he found something with chocolate chips in the mix. Rosie got her Orangina—Sherlock bought himself one as well, he could use the sugar boost to deal with her petulance—and they settled on a low wall beside the pavement to fuel up. While Rosie ate, Sherlock drew out the contents of her rucksack.

There was a green paper folder containing her day’s work. Some arithmetic illustrated by sets of varying numbers of cartoon cats (she was still writing her sixes and nines backwards). A drawing of a lion and lioness and two cubs, with a three sentence story: _The lions napt in the gras. The sun was hot all day. The cubs played wressling and chase_. And a photocopied letter on pale blue paper.

Hello Year Two Families,

This month we are theming our lessons around **Family**. We will discuss the members of immediate and extended families in order to build vocabulary with new “super words” like _niece, nephew, great-aunt_ , and _stepparent_. Daily picture books are all about families around the world, and families of many different constellations, as well as talking about adoption, blended families, and the variety of languages, foods, and traditions found in different family homes. Our chapter book this week is _How Tia Lola Came to ~~Visit~~ Stay_ , about a still-loving family that has undergone a divorce.

We invite your feedback about your child’s family, so that we can include and represent everyone. Please feel free to send a note or email. We always love to have volunteer readers share books about families, or if you would like to share a special craft or project, please contact your child’s teacher to arrange a classroom visit.

Our long-term project will be due at the end of the month (specific details to follow as the date draws closer) and is for each student to create a Family Tree to share with schoolmates. We hope to see creative, _age-appropriate_ interpretations, whether a collage, a diorama, a book, or another idea your child has for a fun way to share their family’s history. We ask that at least ten people (including the student) be included in the Family Tree. Families should begin thinking about and discussing this project soon, allowing plenty of time to complete the artistic portions of the project.

Best,  
Year Two Teachers

“You need Dadda’s glasses,” Rosie piped up, and Sherlock instinctively drew the paper closer to himself.

“Perhaps so, but he took them all when he moved to his new flat. Certainly I’m not going to buy any; I don’t need reading glasses.” He re-stacked her papers and squared up the edges. “Watson, are you tired?” he asked abruptly, sliding everything back into her rucksack. She was down to her last few bits of pretzel and cashew.

“No, but I need the toilet.”

“Well anticipated; that was my next question. Is it urgent?”

“I can wait.”

“Best not drink any more of this,” Sherlock mused, spinning the cap onto her mostly-full bottle of orange soda. He stood, swinging her rucksack onto his own shoulder. Rosie was already obviously in much better humour, having got some good-quality calories into her. She reached for Sherlock’s hand, and while she double-timed, Sherlock cut his normal pace in half to match her, and they made it to Baker Street in sufficient time to meet her needs.

 

Sherlock sat in the dimmest corner of an alarmingly grimy pub, just past ten, keeping eyes on a table of five men dressed too well, with slightly-too-posh accents. The daughter-in-law of the one in the wingtip shoes had hired him to determine whether she had married into organised crime—barely a four, held his attention only because her theory was not that her in-laws sold drugs or extorted local business owners but because she thought they were selling counterfeit dogs, or at least dogs with counterfeit kennel club papers reflecting lineages from which the dogs themselves had not descended. The subjects of his surveillance were on their fourth round, giving away nothing of interest, and it would be at least another forty minutes before he was able to follow them out on foot. He drummed his fingertips on the tabletop before he remembered not to—the texture was distinctly sap-like. As he reached into his coat for a handkerchief, his phone buzzed to life in his shirt pocket.

_TXT from JW: Did you see this letter from school? I can’t think of ten people to put on a family tree._

The same thought had occurred to Sherlock.

_It’s only a year two project. Perhaps Watson can make up some people._

_TXT from JW: I don’t know why it should bother me but I feel really fucked off about it._

_All families are complicated._

_TXT from JW: Not like hers.  
There’ll be questions I don’t want to answer. Can’t put her off forever. She’s not a baby any longer._

Sherlock looked up; the men were suddenly on the move, nearly out the door. He got smoothly to his feet, wrapped his coat around himself and started out after them. Once out the door, he watched as they split up and moved toward three cars, nodding and muttering goodnights at each other. Sherlock stood beside the pub’s front door and drew out a cigarette and matches, a bit of stage business to make him a less obvious observer. In his pocket, his phone went several more times.

_TXT from JW: Stupid of the school to presume this is possible for every kid to do._   
_What about ones in care? Or what about ones who have a completely shit parent they don’t see?_   
_What about ones whose dad left to marry someone younger, had another family, forgot about them?_   
_That sounds mad, I know. And quite specific. But those things happen._   
_I don’t know why I let myself think this would never be an issue._   
_Nevermind. My problem. Sorry for this. I needed to vent and the only one here is Rosie, asleep._

Sherlock strode to the next corner, keeping one eye on the second car as he scanned the road for a taxi. He waved and ducked inside, showed an impressive amount of cash in the rearview and told the driver to follow the blue Mercedes, not too close.

_Free Friday evening? Come for dinner and we three can discover or create ten family members._

_TXT from JW: I’ll let you know._

_TXT from JW: Thanks for the offer._

Sherlock would not be holding his breath for John to actually take him up on the offer. Anyway, he had a case to solve.


	4. Chapter 4

Dinner was strange, and indigestion-inducing; Sherlock, at least, had eaten too fast in an effort to get it overwith. John had flashed no fewer than twenty-six of his fake half-grins, indicating he was defensive and poised to spring, though the conversation between them had been limited. Sherlock talked to Rosie. John talked to Rosie. Rosie babbled and blathered in the happy way of children on pizza night. It came clear over the course of an hour that the new hot thing with the Year Two set was something to do with inch-high plastic cats in various colour combinations, collectible and boosted up by relentless advertising and an animated web-series.

“Helen says there’s some in Boots, on a special—sort of—shelf of their own?”

The inquiring intonation at the end of her sentences was new; Sherlock was running analysis on the media she consumed regularly, hoping to pin it more on mimicry of pre-teen actresses on television than on some crisis of confidence in a girl who had no reason to think she was less than the Platonic ideal of a child. Her schoolmates were always a graph-wrecking variable; there were so many of them, two dozen control groups of one, and they morphed unapologetically—almost daily—into entirely new data sets. The gingers were particularly problematic.

“We’ll have to have a look sometime,” John said dully, placating and heroically struggling not to hint at being either bored or puzzled.

“Tomorrow?” Rosie asked instantly.

“Maybe.”

“There’s one called Tiger Wooly that I want the most. Also Butternut and Splish.”

“Tiger Wooly?” John asked, cocking his head, at last truly intrigued.

“Whoo-whee?” Rosie tried again.

Sherlock gathered up the paper everything—pizza box, plates, cups, serviettes—and cleared the table. John crossed his arms.

“Sorry, darling. What’s it called? Tiger. . .”

“I think _Tiger_. _Wooly_.” Her head and shoulders nodded in emphasis.

John caught Sherlock’s gaze, raised his eyebrows. Sherlock grimaced over Rosie’s head and shrugged.

“We’ll look for it. I like that name—Butternut. It’s a yellow one?”

“Golden.”

“Even better.”

“Could it be Tiger _Lily_?” Sherlock asked suddenly. John gave him a gratifyingly enthusiastic nod.

“I don’t know, maybe,” Rosie said quickly. “Helen said it was Tiger Wooly.”

Sherlock resumed his seat with three pencils of varying lengths and points and a yellow, lined pad; he dealt them each a sheet of paper and a pencil.

“You know about the Family Tree project, Watson?”

“Make something showing all the people in your family. I want to make a sign.”

“A poster because it’s easy, or because you like making them and think it will suit the material?” Sherlock challenged. John had already begun doodling cascading cubes in the lower left corner of his page.

“I like them.”

“Fine, then,” Sherlock allowed. “I thought we’d perhaps start out making a list.”

“Then arrange it later,” John added. “Who’s first?”

“Me, Rosie.”

“Rosamund Watson,” John said, and he and Sherlock began to write. Rosie turned her page sideways—ignoring the lines to suit her purpose, a somewhat advanced approach to problem-solving for her age—and wrote _ME_ in the middle.

“Have you got any children?” Sherlock asked, leaning close and squinting at her as if in the midst of interrogation. Rosie giggled.

“You know I haven’t.”

“Why not? Children can be quite nice.”

“I haven’t got one because I _am_ a children!”

Sherlock glanced stagily at John, whose mouth had softened slightly. “No children. Project complete, then.” Sherlock laid down his pencil.

“I have parents I can put,” Rosie volunteered. She drew a ring around her _ME_ , and a short spoke from each side. _Dad_ , she wrote, then _Sherlock_. As she was finishing the K, without looking up and with no particular inflection, she asked, “Do I put the mum who had me?”

John quickly cleared his throat. Sherlock had added _JW_ and _SH_ to his list, with a bracket beside them pointing to _parents_. John had gone on doodling, making crosshatched shadows beneath his cubes.

When it became clear John was not going to respond to Rosie’s inquiry, Sherlock asked, mimicking her casual non-inflection, “What do you think?”

“She’s not in my family except that I grew in her. If it’s a family tree, you have to put just people in your family—do you put only people you know?”

“Usually a family tree is a record of who married who, who was whose parent or brother or sister,” John dodged in favour of focusing on the letter of Rosie’s assignment rather than its spirit. “They can get quite big—imagine two parents having four or six children, who all have partners and children—all the cousins and aunts and uncles may not really know each other in a big gang like that, but they’re still technically family.”

“Have I got cousins?”

“Well.” John harrumphed again, and shifted substantially. He shrugged. “Archie.”

Rosie looked shocked. “Is he? Archie, that big boy we had lunch with after our case?”

Sherlock and John had taken Rosie north one weekend the previous summer to visit a kiddies’ theme park, and told her the manor house B & B where they stayed had had all its pillows stolen the previous week and Sherlock left clues all around the place for her to discover. On their way back to London, they’d had Sunday lunch with Clara and Archie, the former gentle and welcoming, the latter an overgrown pup on the verge of leaving school.

“A bit. His mum—Clara—was married to my sister Harry when Archie was very young. They divorced. But you could say he’s a cousin.”

“Step-cousin,” Sherlock offered.

“Step-cousin-in-law,” John said, and shrugged again. “Which is really nothing, but if you like, you can think of him as a cousin.”

“Some families are more like spider webs than trees,” Sherlock mused. “Perhaps you could make a web on your poster.”

Rosie wrote _Rchie_ a few inches to the left of John’s name.

“I’ll put Harry is my aunt,” she reported. “Even though we don’t see her.”

“If you like,” John said. “It’s true, she’s your aunt.”

“And Mycroft is Sherlock’s brother so he’s my uncle.”

Sherlock let out a soft, sharp, “Ha!” and John worked his eyebrows.

After she’d added _Harry_ and _Micraft_ to her page, she counted. “That’s six. Oh, Granny Hudson goes on here.” She drew lines upward from _Sherlock_ and _Dad_ , both pointing at _Granny H_.

“You know she’s not our mum,” John said, mildly questioning. “She’s neither of our mum.”

“Not the mum that had you,” Rosie agreed. “But she’s the mum of you both, and the granny of me.”

“ _Grandmother_ is the word I think your teacher wants you to use,” Sherlock reminded. He drew lines between the names on his own page and it reminded him of pinning strings between clues on the wall, so he drew circles at the end of each line to make the pinheads. John’s paper still only said _Rosamund Watson_ at the top. He’d drawn spider webs stretching down from the upper corners.

“I’ll write it later, on the real paper.”

“Three more, then?” John offered, and Sherlock could see by the particular frown he wore that he was thinking Rosie would have to put Mary’s name on the page just to fill in the gaps and satisfy her marking rubric.

 

_So in the end, William helped her invent three half-monster cousins and made his brother their dad._

John had given a wildly abbreviated version of the story to his therapist, in the context of spending two hours with Sherlock and Rosie, in their old flat, and how very unlike old times it felt.

_That’s quite funny! You’ll have to tell me how the teacher reacts._

_Can’t wait to find that out, myself. I’m prepared to defend it in case of an attempt to lower her marks._

_As any parent should be. How did the evening end?_

_I kissed my daughter goodnight and let them get on with it. It was William’s time with her._

_So you didn’t have any private conversation, just the two of you?_

_I admit I avoided any possibility of it. Things had gone well up to that point and I didn’t want to spoil it with arguing._

_Was there something to argue about?_

_We’d have found something. Or at the very least it would have been awkward. He’s retreated into this persona he wears. He never used to be like that with me, but it’s this thing he does to keep people at a distance, acting aloof and oblivious, above-it-all. I can see it in his eyes, when he looks at me. Looks at me now like he does at every other fool in the world._

_Why does he need to keep people at arm’s length? Just trying to understand your dynamic better._

_A defense against insult and injury. Hurt them before they hurt you, that kind of thing. In many ways he’s objectively brilliant, but he’s learned over time that often people’s reaction to brilliance is to mock and demean it to big themselves up._

_But he wasn’t that way with you._

_No. I immediately admired him, and made no secret of it. I can be prickly, too, so where he put other people off, I just looked past it. And he probably saw me the same._

_So now you feel he’s retreating away from your more intimate connection._

_Something like that. Why wouldn’t he, of course. But it’s difficult to realise I’ve been cast out of the rarified air. I don’t think we’ll ever again be anything like friends. I thought that was a possibility, back when we only talked in email and texts. Sitting in a room with him all evening showed me different. He’s not letting me in anymore. His guard’s up._

_No doubt the end of your relationship is difficult for him. You used the phrase “hurt them before they hurt you”—has he been unkind? Or is there something else that might cause difficulty with your co-parenting arrangement?_

_We’ve kept our communication businesslike, so far I’m not worried. The things we rowed about when we were together were situation-specific. Just being out of each other’s sight and space instantly eliminated about 95% of the causes of our conflict._

_And the other five percent. . .?_

_Are the things we didn’t talk about then, and certainly aren’t going to talk about now. Ha, you know, I just realised that. It *wasn’t* about the unwashed dishes, or the unreturned texts, or juggling the calendar and who forgot to arrange a childminder to cover the time we were both working._

_It rarely is only about those things. Seems you’re having a bit of a lightbulb moment. Do you think you’re coming to understand what the underlying issues were?_

_We were both just very angry. It made us distant. Because who wants to be around someone who’s angry all the time? Or someone they’re angry with? Probably the stress of having a young child we never expected to have. Jobs that demand a lot of time and energy. One day you wake up and five years have passed and you’re different people than when you started. Not a new story._

_No, but new to you and William. With your own particular spin. Our time is about up for today, but I’d like to leave you with encouragement to think more deeply about what created the anger, and the distance. Perhaps you’ll gain some insight into the distancing behaviour and attitude you sense from William now. I’d also encourage you to do all this with compassion as foundational to your examination of the issues. Compassion for William, if you can manage it—you might have to throw off some baggage to get at it—and compassion for yourself, always._

_That’s a bit woo-woo for me, but I will try._

_Please do. I look forward to chatting again and hearing your thoughts._

_Yeah, same for me. Speak soon_.

 

“We’d better be off,” Sherlock announced, not entirely trusting the time shown on his wristwatch. “Have you finished?”

Rosie was half-off her chair, as ever, more interested in the café’s other patrons than she was in her jam-smeared toast. Sherlock pressed the lid onto her still half-full cup of hot milk sprinkled too generously with cinnamon and nutmeg.

“I don’t want this. You can have it,” she told him, pushed her plate toward him, and began to slip into her coat.

“If I wanted it, I’d have asked for it. Let’s remember this for the future.” They each walked out carrying their paper cups.

“G’morning, bird! . . . Oh, can we say hi to that dog?”

“No, Watson, it’s across the road. Just wave.”

“Hello! I like your dog!”

“No shouting in the morning, please.”

“My ears are cold.”

“Mm. Hat weather. Has Dad got one for you?”

“Dunno.”

There was an uncharacteristic seven-second pause in her chat-stream. Sherlock’s shoulders eased downward.

“If Dadda doesn’t like the mum who had me, why do I have her name, _Mary_?”

Sherlock’s shoulders pinched back upward. He’d asked John a similar question when Rosie was still an infant, squalling—an appropriate word; she stormed in short bursts between periods of sunny tranquility—through every night, deepening Sherlock’s forehead creases and putting shadows under John’s already puffy eyes.

“She wasn’t a real person, John. Mary was just a mask created to draw you in and destroy us both.” There had been soft silence from the basket near the sitting room fire for nearly fifteen minutes and they’d lay side by side in bed, just beginning to allow themselves to trust Rosie would sleep on for at least a little while after her evening routine of a two-hour, near-inconsolable emotional disassembly followed by a bottle, bubbling, and a bath in the kitchen sink.

“I know that, Sherlock. But in that time when I thought I chose her, when she saved me from the grief of losing you. . . just for that little while she _was_ Mary. I know she didn’t love me; it’s all right. But she gave me Rosie. In the whole, insane mess—Amy Gail Ross-Alan, Moriarty, whoever else she was—almost losing you again—for good—feeling completely stupid and utterly humiliated. . .Having to play at Happy Families to keep her from knowing we were onto her when what I really wanted to do was choke her with my bare hands.”

“I’d have liked to have seen that.”

“I know you would; we should probably have a talk about that.” John had half-grinned. “Anyway, from all of that came this shocking, perfect gift of our tiny girl. And if I have to think of anyone as Rosie’s mother, I prefer to think of Mary. She wasn’t real, but she was the best of the lot.”

Sherlock had nodded and hummed assent; he’d liked her, too, before it all went sideways.

“Someday Rosie will be old enough to know about this, and I don’t want to have to tell her that, oh, Richard Brook in that story about Sherlock’s two-year disappearance really _was_ an actor, and Moriarty? turns out—plot twist—she’s your mum.”

“At least if Watson grows up to be a psychopath, you’ll know it’s not my influence that’s done it.”

“Not entirely, no.” John had taken Sherlock’s hand then, kissed his fingers and given him a look. “Shut the door, darling; it might get loud.”

Sherlock felt the bridge of his nose pinching. Finally, he asked, “Do you know the phrase _a wolf in sheep’s clothing_?”

“Kind of. Sheep don’t wear clothes, though. Except Shaun; he sometimes wears a bike helmet. Or sunglasses once.”

“You make a keen point about the inefficiency of idioms. However, what that means is: a very bad person, who is crafty and dangerous inside, can sometimes look on the outside as if they are gentle and non-threatening. Like a wolf wearing a sheep disguise.”

“OK. Remember though, I asked you about my name Mary?”

“Yes. And my answer to why your dad gave you that name is that while we knew her, Mary was a gentle and non-threatening sheep we both liked very much. While she was carrying you, she was the sheep. But once you were born, and came to live with your dad and me, she made it clear she wasn’t a sheep at all. She was a wolf.”

“My mum was a wolf?”

“No, while she was your mother, she was a sheep. A wolf pretending to be a sheep. It’s a metaphor.”

“Am I sheep or a wolf? I want to be a cute, cute lamb.” They were at the edge of the school grounds, children and parents all converging in the bright hubbub of Monday morning; soon enough he would lose Rosie’s attention entirely, when she spotted a pal or made a break for the playground.

“What _you_ are, my dear Watson, is a brilliant girl who will grow up to be King of Beasts, and who I cannot wait to see again.”

He crouched down to receive his hug, kissed her plump cheek, and with one fingertip directed a loose strand of blonde hair into the topmost divot in one of her plaits.

“Love you,” Rosie told him, and already he could feel her urgency to peel off from him and get on to the next thing.

“Your dad will pick you up after school.” He touched her hair again, and she leaned away but didn’t protest. “Go on, then. Remember: only half of what they teach you is true.”

She giggled and ran to meet a friend, and Sherlock could see her leaving his world, stepping self-assuredly into her own, and reassured himself the stinging he felt was probably pride.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm reserving the right to change the story's title, just FYI. I'm not 100% pleased with it. I'll keep you posted.

“This fella’s going to decorate his Christmas tree.” Rosie and John had pushed the narrow coffee table against the front of the sofa so there was room for them to sit on the floor; Rosie picked out small figures of animals, people, and vehicles from a basket that was usually kept under the table, and arranged them on the floor—slightly haphazard rows of soldiers all facing the same direction—told John their stories as she went. Now and then he added one, but mostly Rosie was content to do it herself, only wanting him present and attentive. They’d been lining up figures together since she’d been a toddler; they called the game Animal Parade despite the fact of other species and that it was not much of a parade, given no one marched anywhere and there was no particular occasion to mark.

“Bit early for the tree, isn’t it?” John asked absently, rearranging himself to stretch his legs—careful not to bump any of the toys—and cross his ankles. Good thing he’d taken up yoga those years back to calm his often stormy mind or he might never get up again.

“Their Christmas is coming just in a few days. Pretend it’s nearly Christmas.”

“Oh, all right.”

“Have you seen the red and yellow frog that looks like this one?”

John stirred the contents of the basket, searching.

“All the red animals are the same team.”

“Yeah?—Here’s the frog—What’s their sport?”

“Football. They have practice on Monday and Wednesday, and matches on Saturday morning.”

“Like you, then,” John humoured her. Under his breath he added, “Practice right in the middle of the dinner hour, no doubt.”

“Dadda, pretend it was Christmas and did you know if you leave a present for Santa he will still leave you presents? But if you leave a chocolate rabbit for the Easter Bunny he will say you already have a chocolate bunny so he won’t leave you one. So please don’t give me any chocolate rabbits at Easter before then.”

“Cross my heart,” John promised, warmed over with love for her earnestness and her creativity, and the gentle way she set each animal and astronaut in place, just so, chatting away all the while. “Are we going to get dressed and maybe get out of here today, or are we having a pyjama day?” It was nearly ten and although Rosie could be relied upon never to sleep past seven even on a Sunday, they had taken their time about breakfast and John’s three cups of black tea, snuggled close on the sofa to watch two episodes of Rosie’s plastic-cat cartoon on her tablet, and then worked at their Animal Parade for the best part of an hour.

“Can we go to the old park?”

“We can walk to our one, though, and that one’s a tube ride away.”

“But maybe Lulu is there. She doesn’t come to our park.” Lulu had been Rosie’s nearest-in-age friend back in Baker Street, a fixture at their playground for the past three years. “Can you call her mum and ask if she can come play here?”

“I don’t have her mum’s phone number, I’m afraid.” John chastised himself; he’d chatted with the girl’s mother—a solicitor who hated her job—many times, but their acquaintance was limited to chance though frequent encounters at the park, where both girls burned off energy before dinner, baths, and bedtimes. It had never been necessary before to have a way to arrange an appointment for Rosie to meet up with her friend.

“Can you call Sherlock and ask him to go look and see if Lulu’s playing? Then if she is, we can hurry up and get dressed and go there very quickly.”

“Tell you what. When you’re with Sherlock tomorrow after school, you can put him on the case, and I’m sure he’ll sort it all out. He’ll send me Lulu’s mum’s number, and we can arrange a playdate for you here at our playground, some afternoon or on a weekend. How’s that sound?”

“Can you just call him now? I’ll brush my own hair.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t want to go looking for Lulu right now, darling.”

“Let’s just _go_ ,” Rosie insisted, adding a distinct whine to her tone. “I know she’s there right now.”

“Know what?” John said, hoping to redirect her. “Talking of Christmas, if we’re going to have a tree, we’re going to have to get some things to tart it up with. What if we get dressed and brush our own hair—as you suggest—and go out to the shops to find some, I don’t know, strings of beads or silver snowflakes or whatever. The whole lot. What do you think?” He boosted and unfolded himself to stand, and arched his back so much he couldn’t help but look at a wavering, beige water stain on the ceiling.

“Can we get some gingerbread persons? And remember that one with the little picture of me when I was a baby?”

“From your first Christmas,” John said. “That one’s still at—” He was about to say _at home_ , thought to instead say, _at Sherlock’s_ , and finally settled on clearing his throat and finishing, “You’ll find it when you do a tree with Sherlock.” John made a mental note to ask Mrs Hudson to remind Sherlock when the time came that he should buy a tree and make a date with Rosie to decorate it. It had always been John’s duty to arrange for Christmas trees and pots of tulips in the spring and a new jumper and warm gloves for Rosie on bonfire night; he had little faith that Sherlock would remember to do any of it under his own steam. “Two Christmas trees! That’s not bad, is it?” he enthused, and Rosie looked to be thinking it over.

“Remember the magnifying glass and the little laptop, too? Sherlock and you. You should have a stethoscope. Why is it a laptop?”

“I used to type a lot, before. You don’t remember? When Sherlock and I were working together on his cases, and then I’d type up the stories for people to read.”

“You didn’t do cases,” Rosie said, sounding incredulous.

John touched her shoulder. “Up you get; put on some clothes. I used to do all the cases—what do you mean?”

“Sherlock did cases and you stayed home with me.” Rosie had a set of ready-to-assemble cubes in place of a chest of drawers, and she drew out her favourite, too-small-if-we’re-being honest, blue and red Fair Isle print leggings.

“Well, we couldn’t leave you alone. A lot of that time you and I were together, I was on the phone with him, texting about the cases.”

“Asking what to write in the stories?”

“ _No_ ,” John said, shaking his head, emphatic. “Helping.”

“Sherlock needs an assist-it. He always says that.”

“Yeah, that was me.”

“Can we get candy canes?”

“You’ll just eat them all up long before Christmas, if we buy them now.”

“I won’t. I’ll save them”

John nodded, with an amused if skeptical smile-frown. “M-hm.”

“I’ll just have one.”

“Course you will. Go and get your boots on.”

 

The first aid kit was still under the foot of Sherlock’s bed. He clicked the plastic latches back and unfolded its many-layered interior, expanding shelves full of ointment packets and alcohol swabs, wet and dry dressings, strange-angled scissors, a miniature flashlight, and a tube of water-purification pills. In the bottom was a sling, a silver blanket folded improbably small, rolls of beige elastic bandage. His trousers were torn at the knees, the palms of his hands streaked raw and filled with street-grit. As the fabric of his trousers pulled away from where it had stuck to his scraped and bloody shins, Sherlock let out a whooshing hiss, then another, because the first had felt so nice. The back of his head ached where he’d been battered, probably with a length of pipe.

Once he’d flushed his wounds with saline, standing naked from the waist-down in the bathtub, he applied antibiotic cream and wrapped one knee in gauze, then splinted it with a rubberised sleeve. He dry-swallowed pain relievers from the medicine chest, finished undressing, and dropped himself on his bed. A navy-blue cashmere throw lay across the lower corner of the mattress, which he unfurled and draped over the body going soft where it had once been taut, his thighs narrower now, and slack, all of which he preferred not to see.

Of course Sherlock was plainly aware he was the cat looking to get itself killed through self-indulgent curiosity; always had been. Inching closer, half-out of the shadows, eventually donning a third or less of some disguise or other and walking straight into the thick of it. Thugs and schemers looking at him through narrowed eyes, knives no doubt folded inside their pockets, if not already in their hands. Now and then there was a foot chase, a climb up an aged and rusty fire escape, a dog trained to go for the bollocks. It was a damned shame his body was betraying him by beginning to break down when he was as keen to take on all comers as he had been at twenty-five. His reflexes were slower—still quicker than most—and his eyes and ears were becoming alarmingly lazy. Danger was intrinsic; a knock on the head now and then was a good reminder that he must stay alert and on his toes. And perhaps not go alone to a counterfeiter’s warehouse in the earliest hours of a Tuesday morning.

It was the danger, which had once been a siren’s song to John—irresistible, enticing, erotic—that eventually caused John’s withdrawal in retreat. One too many threats to break his bones from one too many men with cauliflower ears and tattooed knuckles. More than his share of being driven too fast and too recklessly on rain-slick, winding roads. A ludicrous number of abductions; Sherlock had once joked John must by then be the most kidnapped man in Britain, but John had failed to join him in his laughter, only looking grim.

“It’s not a job for a person with a child, Sherlock. She’s got no one else in the world; I just can’t take foolish risks anymore.”

“Firefighters have children. And helicopter pilots,” Sherlock had argued, reminding John that he was not so special. Because he was a father and because John admired him, Sherlock added, “Lestrade.”

“There are rules to all of those. To minimise risk. You, on the other hand, have a rather alarming tendency to maximise risk. Because it’s fun.”

“It is,” Sherlock had grinned at him, inviting John to go along. “You know it is.”

John had huffed a sigh out his nose. “I’ll make phone calls and do web-searches, come along to crime scenes, and whatever else I can do with corpses or at a distance from criminals. But no more late-night skulking in dark alleys.”

“I don’t _skulk_.”

“I’m someone’s dad. I’d be a fool and an arsehole to carry on chasing drugs-dealers through the streets at midnight.”

Sherlock had eventually—somewhat reluctantly—agreed it was likely better for John to make an active go at staying alive, at least until Rosie was self-sufficient enough to fix her own breakfasts and tie her own shoes, and so allowed John to pick and choose. Texts and video chats kept him involved, at a safe distance. When Rosie started school, he began to fill his days, and his bank account, with per diem work at various clinics. He still wrote up the cases, though not all of them, and readers of his blog commented on the change in tone over time, less exuberant, more formulaic. Distant from the subject; more _he_ and _him_ than _we_ and _us_. But most important was that Rosie wouldn’t have a dad who ran straight into the heart of other people’s trouble, sometimes emerging out the other side with a black eye or having had a pistol too-recently aimed at his racing heart. John was right; Sherlock’s marriage to his work had no room in it for children. The price he’d paid for the legwork that went with his brainwork was to suppress whatever longing he had to make Rosie his own—the frequent, nagging irritation in his chest that something wasn’t quite right in his world. Most of the time it felt like a suitable trade.

 

To: John_Watson@UKFreemail.com, SH@scienceofdeduction.com  
From: E.Shea@DisraeliPrimary.edu  
RE: Parent/Teacher Meeting

Dear Dr Watson and Mr Holmes,

I would like to meet with both of you at the earliest mutually convenient time to discuss some recent ongoing concerns about Rosamund’s work product, topics of conversation, and peer interactions. I wonder if she may be having some trouble coping with changes to her routines, and perhaps not handling her emotions in the most beneficial way for her. I understand you were separated over the summer, and I have often found in the past that when children have these kinds of adjustments to make, there are bound to be bumps along the way. As we all want nothing but the best for Rosamund both in school and at home, I feel it would help me better address issues during school time if I could speak with you about these issues.

Below are five available dates/times, please let me know which works best and I will look forward to seeing you both.

Best,

Emma Shea  
Year Two Teacher, Room 114


	6. Chapter 6

Sherlock stood with his near-empty cup of tea and Rosie’s near-full cup of warm milk, one in each gloved hand, near the Year Two queue-up spot in the school yard, while Rosie chased a boy and two girls around in bumble-bee zigzags, all of them shouting and with first-of-the-day energy he would have marveled at had it been less volume-intensive. He spotted John across the yard but could not motion to him or wave, so instead whistled, which caused a brief ripple of curious silence around him but which served to catch John’s attention and direct him.

“Watson, are you going to finish this?”

“You can have it.”

Sherlock resolved not to buy her milk at Speedy’s anymore on school mornings; he would just start a fund with the unspent cash and pay her not to whinge about wanting things they both knew she did not actually want. He wondered if not buying her milk could mark him out as a failing parent, though. Didn’t children require milk at intervals? Over quite a long time, it had certainly seemed so. For their bones.

“Hey, hi.” John, frowning, but lightly.

“It’s not as grim as all that,” Sherlock assured him.

“What? All I said was hi.”

“The meeting with the teacher. It’s not uncommon for children of separated parents to act out at school. Personally, I’m curious to hear what form it’s taken. My money’s on refusal to cooperate with instruction.”

“She was fine, though, for nearly six months.”

“Honeymoon period,” Sherlock intoned. The bell went and the children queued up and marched inside.

“One of those for me?” John joked hopefully, gesturing at Sherlock’s two paper cups.

“Sorry. Perhaps insisting I buy her this and then refusing to drink it is acting out? If so, it’s a somewhat disappointing choice of method.”

As they approached the main doors, Sherlock found a bin and ditched the cups. At the front desk John introduced them and indicated they had an appointment with Ms Shea, Rosie’s teacher. They were installed in a small conference room with all the chairs alike and uncomfortable—not quite high enough in relation to the table—and sat, still wearing their coats. John folded his hands in front of him on the tabletop; his thumb worked absently against the one pinned beneath it. Sherlock restrained himself from putting his hand on top of John’s to quiet the fidget. He longed for a view, but the windows were high up and narrow, and all he saw through them was the white-grey sky.

Not only Ms Shea, but the head teacher, headmistress, and two other women filed into the room. Sherlock sat up straighter and John’s clutched knuckles went a bit white.

“Good morning, Dr Watson. Mr Holmes, nice to see you both again,” the teacher began. Sherlock cut a glance to John, and saw by the angle of his smile he was still fantasizing about her with some regularity. John cleared his throat; Sherlock closed his eyes to hide rolling them.

“We’ve met once, I think,” the headmistress said, and reached to shake their hands before taking her seat. “You know Mrs Green, our head teacher. This is Joanna Shute, she’s the school social worker we share with Hawley and Hatton primary schools. And Miriam Rosenberg, school psychologist.”

Sherlock imagined whatever Watson was getting up to in school, it was far less disappointing than her mild refusal to drink her milk. John’s throat-clearing reached a crescendo as the army of women arrayed against the two of them took up their positions on the opposite side of the table. Their smiles seemed suddenly viper-like; Sherlock raised his guard.

Ms Shea took the lead. “First of all, I want you to know how much I enjoy having Rosamund in my classroom. She is a diligent worker, very generous with friends, always curious and eager to learn. Here are some things we worked on yesterday.” She slid two sheets toward them, one with maths fill-in-the-blanks—early training for algebraic equations, Sherlock realised—and another with the preprinted title “I partner-read with” beneath which Rosie had written two classmates’ names, and with a summary sentence she’d written across the bottom on two printed lines: _In Snowman Magic a boy builds a snowman and imagines it comes alive and plays with him_.

Sherlock felt scorn for the child in the book having such a dull imagination. Likewise the book’s author.

“And here is something Rosie drew this morning during a free period.”

The tone of the teacher’s voice communicated concern over what they were about to be handed, and Sherlock felt a thrill of anticipation but schooled his expression to minimise the appearance of condoning outrageous behaviour. He arranged a frown, thinking it might spare him, but suspected no matter what came of the meeting John would somehow blame him for Rosie’s troubles.

The drawing Ms Shea handed over to them was not instantly recognizable as anything obvious—house, human figures, sunshine, animal—but did give a distinct impression of goriness. There were great swaths of red, and as Sherlock went on looking, he made out the shapes of bones (to be exact, a femur, and a broken one that might have been an ulna, as it was quite thin and not very long). There were large eyes, also red. Many triangles, edged in red: bloody fangs.

“Wow,” John said, with a fake, we’re-in-this-together sort of laugh. “That’s a bit of something.” He picked up the paper, tilted it toward Sherlock, who made a show of looking at it, nodding, maintaining the frown that might help him avoid trouble later. “A monster?” John offered.

“She told me it’s a werewolf,” the teacher replied. “We find a lot of monster-mania in Year Two,” she explained, sweet-sounding, affectionate toward her charges. “It’s an age where children are recognizing themselves as individuals apart from their parents, which can be a bit scary. So I find a lot of them develop a bit of an affinity for monsters, things that scare them a bit.”

The psychologist picked up on the thread. “Frightening themselves just a little, and getting through it, is a bit of a test they give themselves and sometimes each other. Surviving and conquering a little fear helps them understand they have internal resources they can draw on to confront larger worries and difficulty.”

“Right,” John said blandly. His expression had changed; he was closing down and becoming more guarded, sensitive to any perceived slights against Rosie and her obvious perfection.

“My concern with this, as far as Rosamund’s recent behaviour, is that I must remind her pretty often that her classmates have different tolerance levels for frightening ideas and images. She seems to enjoy telling stories that can be scary to those children who are a bit more sensitive, and needs repeated direction to stop, and perhaps choose another activity.”

John cleared his throat and hummed. Sherlock folded his arms over his chest.

“There have also been a few incidents of putting hands on classmates, not hitting, but taking up personal space, even after the child has asked her to stop.”

“I’ll have a chat with her,” John said, sounding defensive, and Sherlock could sense the tension radiating off him; he wanted out. Probably so he could blow up at Sherlock for exposing her to morbid and unsavoury things, which had become a theme of theirs over the years, as if John had not been a surgeon, did not own countless textbooks packed with full-colour photos of exposed ropes of muscle and gooey organs.

Sherlock did not like the way the women stared unspeaking at him and John, evaluating them. The school psychologist piped up again. “One issue Ms Shea brought to my attention is that Rosamund may be in a phase where reality and fantasy are a bit blurry?—not uncommon, nothing to worry excessively over—and that she is asserting some rather fanciful things about herself? And when other children try to correct her, she is resistant to the point of explosive anger, shouting and stamping feet, sometimes running off in a huff?”

“I think to keep herself from lashing out physically,” the teacher inserted, “Which is actually a good thing. We want them to begin disciplining their own bodies, at this age.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes and leaned forward fractionally. “So, Watson is making up scary stories to entertain other seven-year-olds. And you’re asserting that as evidence she may be out of touch with reality.”

“Not at all,” the psychologist insisted. “Nothing worrisome, in terms of mental health. This is all developmentally appropriate. It’s only that—”

“Rosie told me that drawing is of _her_ ,” the teacher said, and her face flickered a moment of true alarm. “She is very invested in the idea that she is a werewolf.”

Sherlock twigged, and let out a puff of a sigh. “Wolf in sheep’s clothing,” he muttered.

“What’s this, now?” John asked, and peripherally Sherlock saw him turning in his seat but refused to meet John’s gaze; he was in no mood to be confronted in front of a social worker and a psychologist.

Sherlock showed his palms. “Watson asked me about her biological mother, and I employed the metaphor of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Perhaps it confused her; I did try to clarify.”

Sherlock braced for impact; John would surely berate him in the gritted-teeth, _there are real people present_ manner he employed for public scolds.

“Well,” John said, and his tone was not at all what Sherlock had expected. “We do tell her that if she works hard, she can grow up to be anything she wants to be.” He shrugged, and raised his eyebrows, restraining a smirk, clearly recruiting Sherlock to his side. “And surely you know about this one.” He jerked his thumb toward Sherlock. “Shocking things sort of go with the territory.”

“It’s hard to know whether there’s a genetic component to international criminal mastermind,” Sherlock offered, and he was far less successful at repressing a grin of his own, “But all the reading I’ve done indicates nurture can override nature to a remarkable extent. We do stay on the right side of the law.”

A significant degree of alarm warred with skeptical confusion on the faces of the girl gang staring them down.

John laid his hands on the tabletop, indicative of an intention to rise from his chair. “I’ll have a chat with her about toning it down,” he said, with a degree of _thank-you-for-your-input_ Sherlock found admirable; instead of passing around blame, John had chosen closure of ranks and a staunch, unconditional defense of his own. Sherlock tried not to find this protective assertion sexy, wondered if he was barred from attraction to John simply because their relationship had broken down, decided it was biological and beyond his ability to control, wallowed in momentary appreciation of the particular, firm set of John’s shoulders.

John gathered the schoolwork they’d been offered. “I’ll take these to pin up at home? If she’s still terrorizing the other kids in a few weeks, maybe we can reconvene.” John stood, so Sherlock stood. “Enjoy the rest of your day,” John fake-grinned at the dumbstruck women, and Sherlock waved his hand in front of his chest.

Back outside, John began folding the papers to slide into his coat pocket, paused at the drawing. “Mind if I keep this one?” he asked. “I actually kind of like it.”

“No, of course,” Sherlock agreed.

“I’ll talk to her tonight.” It was John’s day to pick her up from school, his day off from clinic work.

“Probably for the best. Sorry for the mess.”

“Not at all; it’s an apt metaphor. Sounds like Rosie’s just working through some thoughts about Mary.”

Sherlock nodded, hands in his pockets, one tapping itchily at the cigarette packet within it. He dared to venture, “Are you free? Coffee?”

John frown-smiled and shook his head. “Hm, nah, I should—” he tipped his head.

“Right,” Sherlock immediately surrendered.

“Thanks for coming to this.”

“Of course.” Sherlock’s fingertips in his pocket found the matchbook, moved it into position to withdraw both in one go. “I’ve got a case on, anyway.”

“Oh?” John was being polite.

“Nothing exciting. Forgeries. Financial shenanigans.” Sherlock’s shins were still scabbed from his last case; for the moment he was relieved for something he could do in daylight, on borrowed computers.

“About a three then,” John said knowingly, without sarcasm.

“Two and a half.”

They both smiled, shuffling. “All right, then,” John said briskly.

“Right.”

“See you around.”

Sherlock hummed. John did his soldierly pivot and marched away down the pavement. Sherlock turned his back and at last lit his cigarette.


	7. Chapter 7

“I could have just brought her to you when she’s done playing,” John volunteered, preemptively fending off a grumpy reaction from Sherlock about having to put on shoes and coat to meet them in what Rosie was lately calling “the park at home.”

Sherlock shrugged, with one of his fake smiles—no bother, no trouble—and John could smell fresh cigarette smoke around him. The lapels of his coat. Probably his hair, which wanted trimming. Sherlock said with practised nonchalance, “She could be hours. Immune to the cold.”

John staged a hand-wringing gesture, as if warming them. “She always has been,” he agreed. Rosie was at the top of the play structure with her friend Lulu and two boys, all instructing each other about new and more intricate rules for their game of make-believe, never seeming to get around to the actual playing bit. John lifted his chin in her direction, to call up to her. “Rose, look who’s here.”

“Sherlock!” she squealed, the only one of the three of them at ease with herself, the only one not playing make-believe. “Lulu’s here playing, too. And these fellas.”

“Very good, Watson. Good morning, children.”

John wondered why Sherlock could not just say _hi guys_ , why he had to keep even eight-year-old children at artificial distance. Old habits, to some degree, surely. But the Only One In The World also felt he had a reputation to uphold, and he would hold it up for even kids on a playground to look at. A year before, John would have gotten after him about it. Five years before, John would have gently corrected him. John only cleared his throat a bit, and left it.

“Was chatting with Lulu’s mum a bit, earlier,” he offered, motioning to the other side of the park, where the woman sat on a bench with a paperback novel in her hands, marking her out as part of John and Sherlock’s can’t-get-used-to-reading-on-a-phone age cohort. “Couldn’t for the life of me remember her name. What is it?”

“Madeline. Mercer.”

“Right, Madeline. Madeline, Madeline,” John repeated to himself, under his breath. “I’ll remember next time.”

“Unlikely,” Sherlock said. Six months before, it would have been sniping, but it was mild; Sherlock was watching the children, tracking Rosie’s movements with his eagle eyes.

“You don’t have to watch her every second,” John told him. Sherlock glanced his way and John half-smiled to show he wasn’t criticising; Sherlock’s eyes narrowed at him and John looked away. “One of the perks of her getting older is that we can trust her not to do a runner. When she was two and three, remember we each had to stand by a gate to be sure she didn’t go greet a dog or take herself home?”

“True,” Sherlock agreed. He reached into his coat pockets, quickly drew his hands out again. Looking for cigarettes, then remembering himself. “It’s only that I enjoy watching her. I find her interesting.”

“Yeah,” John agreed, shuffled his feet and crossed his arms with hands tucked against his ribs. He remembered how content he’d been to watch her sitting on a blanket on the floor between their two armchairs, passing a chain of plastic links from hand to hand. He could look at her face forever, and knew he’d never get bored. It really was like a kind of falling in love; the only other person he’d ever been so utterly besotted by was Sherlock. John would know them anywhere, by just their bare toes.

John cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to cut into your time, hanging about. I should be on my way.”

“It’s fine,” Sherlock said, monotone. It might really be fine or it might not; Sherlock was not giving much away to John these days. His hand drifted up toward his chest, going for cigarettes again. A divorceable offense, five years ago.

_Wipe out the sink when you shave, or I’ll divorce you._

_If you wear that out in public I’ll divorce you._

_Kiss me or I’m going to have to divorce you._

They’d constantly threatened to divorce each other, jokily, with affection—such a stupid threat it could only be funny—and eventually Rosie had gotten in on the act as well, threatening to divorce them if they cooked fish for dinner, or when they tried to have a lazy Sunday lie-in and Rosie was already up and dressed—even my shoes, look!—and ready to _GO_.

She came streaking across the playground at full speed, the wily, loose hairs around her face plastered down with sweat despite the early winter cold. Sherlock bent and opened his arms to catch her, and his smile was one of the real ones, hers alone. She locked her hands around the back of his neck and swung from his neck for him to catch and lift her. Sherlock let out an uncomfortable grunt, reached for her fingers and loosened them. After a quick rearrangement of her limbs, he hefted her up into his arms, then let her slide back down to earth.

“I’m off, darling,” John told her.

“Aww!” she protested, stomping one foot theatrically and pushing out her bottom lip. It was clearly put on—a caricature of emotion—but John played along a bit.

“Oh, now, it’s not so bad. I’ll pick you up from school Wednesday. I promise you won’t even miss me. But here. Hug, please.” His knee creaked and groaned as he set it on the foamy surface of the play area, and Rosie leaned into his arms. He squeezed her extra hard. “I’ll miss you every second.”

“OK then,” Rosie agreed, and let herself be soundly kissed on the cheek before she peeled away, sprinting, folding herself back into the group of friends piled on a wide saucer-shaped swing, trying to sync up their momentum to get it going.

“She recovered quickly,” John said, self-deprecating, and heard Sherlock hum. “What was that about—your neck? Slept wrong?” He’d already said he was leaving, and yet here he was making small talk with the only man on earth who hated small talk more than John did.

“Got myself bashed up, actually. On a case. Bit of a lump.”

John felt his eyebrows crumple. “How long ago?” he asked, gathering the history to put in the chart. “I’ll have a feel of it?”

“It’s fine,” Sherlock said, but he pulled the collar of his coat down in back, leaned a bit to his left. They still remembered all the steps. With three fingers straddling the border of Sherlock’s neck and his over-long hair, John sought and found a bump no bigger than a marble in the middle of a sizable haematoma, judging by the way Sherlock sucked his breath and flinched away from the touch. “Tender there?” John asked.

“Just bruised.”

“Yeah, I think so, too. I suppose you know by now how to determine if you’re concussed.”

“Nothing like,” Sherlock dismissed with a shrug. “He pulled his swing, and I was turning; barely a glance.” His lips curled upward and assumed one of his boastful poses. “Just a kiss.”

“Right,” John allowed, with knowing sarcasm. “Anyway, if the lump’s still there in a week, have it looked at.”

“Might do.” Dismissive. Teasing.

Everything between them having stayed easy and pleasant for nearly twenty minutes, John knew he should get out on a high note; they could never dance very long before the tone of the music would inevitably turn sour.

“You know, I mentioned something to Rosie about how I used to help with your cases, and I don’t think she believed me.” John offered it as a point of interest. It had nagged at him a bit in the intervening days—that Rosie didn’t know or remember him as Sherlock’s second. Of course, she wouldn’t; he’d stopped doing legwork well before she was aware of the things the adults in her life got up to that didn’t center solely around her. But he’d kept up writing the blog, for a while. She must not remember that either—suggesting his Christmas ornament should be doctorly rather than writerly—and he’d been thinking rather a lot about how she saw him. How everyone did.

“She doesn’t believe I fenced at school, either,” was Sherlock’s reply, his attempt at commiseration, and not too wide of the mark. “Even after I showed her the plaques.”

“The rapier on the bedroom wall,” John put in.

“I don’t know how she explained that to herself.”

“Surely she’s too young to already be thinking we’re less than amazing?”

“John, I fear we’re losing her respect.”

John smirked. “They grow up so fast.”

“Pity us.”

John caught Sherlock’s eye and found it glinting. They both smiled. Real smiles.

 

_I forgot to ask how the werewolf discussion played out. –SH_

_TXT from JW: I think I got her cleared up on the metaphor.  
But Fairly certain she still thinks she’s a supernatural creature._

Rosie was at school; Sherlock had just agreed to take on a client—a woman insistent that her husband had recently been buried alive—who had left him a thick stack of folders and clipped-together reports comprising the man’s medical history, particularly in his final weeks.

_I’ve a new case, medical, and could use your expertise.—SH_

There was a long pause. Sherlock began to type, _No pressure, of course_ , but John responded before he sent it.

_TXT from JW: What sort of case?_

Sherlock smiled to himself, looked across at the empty armchair that had been John’s favoured retreat since the very first day.

_Premature interment.—SH_

Another pause, and Sherlock imagined the way John’s face would knit up and then unravel as he decoded it.

_TXT from JW: What, buried alive? Surely that’s not possible._

_Come have a look at these medical records and tell me whether it is or not.—SH_

_TXT from JW: When’s a good time?_

_Whenever you’re free.—SH_

_TXT from JW: I’ll come by after the clinic. Late hours tonight. Half-nine?_

_See you then. –SH_

 

“Watson will be sorry to have missed you,” Sherlock said, half-over his shoulder as they climbed the stairs to the flat. John reckoned he would never be used to ringing the bell, waiting on the stone step for someone to open the door. It was the first time he’d stepped foot in the place since the day he and Rosie moved out.

“She went to bed all right?”

“Fine. She started asking if she could go to sleep well before dinner.”

“I think having dance class right after school is a lot for her,” John said, hanging his coat on the hall tree, but not taking off his shoes. "It was the same last week.”

Sherlock offered him tea, which John declined, then whiskey, which he accepted. Sherlock poured them each a splash and directed John to sit at the kitchen table, where there were five separate, neatly stacked piles of paperwork. He ticked them off, touching each one with the tip of his finger. “Relevant medical history for the past thirteen years; heart, lung, and brain specialist visits since 2010; visiting nurses and other at-home attendants; hospice records; and the wife’s notes taken contemporaneously during his final hospitalisation and the period in hospice care.”

Past Sherlock’s shoulder, John spotted the edge of a green glass ashtray that had always lived on the mantel, pushed far back on top the fridge where Rosie wouldn’t see it. He sipped the whiskey and grimaced his appreciation, then set the glass down on the table.

“So what makes the widow think he was still alive?”

They worked around the corner from each other at the table; John made notes on a yellow pad while Sherlock added random items to a new pile in front of him, arranged in some arcane, Sherlock-specific manner John would never decipher but which made perfect sense to Sherlock. Now and then he flung something onto the floor, having ruled it unimportant or found it redundant. John leaned down each time to retrieve the discards, set them aside to be out of their way without getting lost. They each had a second glass of whiskey—a more generous pour the second time as it was John that poured it—and they traded John’s cheaters back and forth between them. It was quite a lot of reading, and John knew better than to talk much while Sherlock was uploading information and beginning to sort and arrange it in his brain, so mostly they were quiet.

The picture that assembled itself from the man’s medical history was a fascinating one. Diagnosed with ALS in his thirties, he had never succumbed to the usual symptoms; the diagnosis remained but no treatment was given. By the time the man was in his mid-sixties John began to see notes like “Dx ALS 1989? Asymptomatic. Question validity of dx.” The man had worked in construction and twice been treated for head injuries related to work, after which he displayed signs of narcolepsy, had migraines, and experienced periods of numbness and paralysis of his hands, arms, and feet. His wife described periods of “spaciness” when he seemed not to hear or see her—John thought these episodes were possibly seizures. There’d been a heart attack and bypass surgery at 59 and the records showed the man had been hard to rouse from anaesthesia, got bad reports from the nursing staff during his recovery that he was combative and abusive, and though he was repeatedly sedated in amounts that seemed to John to be excessive, every report stated the man continued to complain of an inability to sleep.

By the time John sat back in his chair to stretch, and looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall (due to Sherlock’s influence, Rosie was the only child in her class who could tell time on an analog clock, and who understood the meaning of “quarter to” and “eight minutes past”), it was already well after eleven.

“Oh, hell, is that the time?”

Sherlock hummed at him, peering across the top rim of John’s reading glasses, which he wore on the tip of his nose like a spinster aunt. John thought it suited him, made him look a bit meek—even vulnerable—which was not a veneer Sherlock often wore.

“I should get going,” John said, though he was reluctant to stop poring through the material, especially now that he’d teased out the common thread of sleep disorders. “I’ll be the one they’re mistaking for dead, tomorrow.”

Sherlock grinned at the joke, which John thought was generous of him.

John rose from the chair and went rather automatically with his empty glass to the sink, where he turned on the cold tap before he remembered he was a guest. “Oh, do you mind. . .?”

“Of course not.”

“One for you, while I’m at it?”

Sherlock passed his glass. “Thank you.” John saw his gaze shift, up and over, looking at the ashtray on top of the fridge.

“You’re smoking again.” He wasn’t sure why he’d said it; it seemed an easy path to argument. It was only half his concern now—Sherlock didn’t have to stay alive for him anymore, but there was Rosie to think of. Bad influence, normalizing unhealthy behaviour.

“Only when Watson’s not at home.”

John nodded, half-frowning. “That must be difficult.”

“I admit by the time I’m walking her to school the last of our mornings, I am rather desperate and perhaps hurry her a bit as a result.” Sherlock laughed at himself, under his breath. “I’ll give it up,” he added, unconvincing and unconvinced.

“I had a patient recently,” John said, leaning against the sink, with a few swallows of water left in his glass. “Proper _ancient_ geezer.” He looked at Sherlock, who smiled dutifully. “Ninety-three, if you can believe that. Told me that when he’d turned seventy, he started drinking in the pub every lunch time, and took up smoking because he wanted to look cool.”

Sherlock briefly smiled, this time with true amusement.

“He said he would have been having multiple and frequent amourous encounters with ladies, as well, except that he couldn’t convince any ladies to shag him.”

“Did he use the term _shag_?” Sherlock asked, entertained by the story but skeptical.

“He said _ride_ , actually. He’s Irish.”

John waited for a laugh, but Sherlock only went on mildly smiling.

“Well, don’t know how much help I’ve been. I’d like to have another go at it,” John volunteered, then backed off. “If you need it.”

“If the internet fails me, you’re the first one I’ll call. I think the sleep disorder angle is one to pursue.” Sherlock stood, and they walked toward the landing. “You’ll let me know if something occurs to you later.”

“Yeah, of course.” John put on his jacket, felt his pockets for his phone and wallet. “I can do some research in the journals online as well, if that would help.”

“Everything helps,” Sherlock said, but the smile that accompanied the words was a smirky half-one John recognised from the repertoire. To John’s surprise, Sherlock, too, put on his coat. “I’ll walk you down,” he said, and withdrew a packet of cigarettes he shook at John, looking completely unashamed.

“I thought you were giving it up?”

“Tomorrow.”

Out on the pavement, John extended his right hand, which felt perhaps even more wrong than parting without a handshake would have, and he immediately regretted it. When Sherlock didn’t respond right away, he regretted it _and_ wanted to kick himself. Eventually Sherlock set the unlit cigarette he was fumbling with between his teeth and put John out of his misery.

“Tell Rosie I love her.”

“Good night, John.”

“Night, now.”


	8. Chapter 8

_TO:[SH@scienceofdeduction.com](mailto:SH@scienceofdeduction.com)_  
_FROM:[John_Watson@UKFreeMail.com](mailto:John_Watson@UKFreeMail.com)_  
_RE: Your Case_

_Been looking through some journal articles about Locked In Syndrome—happens with stroke patients and ALS patients, where the mind is intact but the body and facial muscles are paralysed—wonder if the guy in your case had something similar. Not usually episodic, though with his record of seizures and the sleep disorder stuff, I wonder if he was having symptoms that came and went. Maybe a tumour in the brain or high in the spinal cord, with alternating pressure/relief of pressure? Is there any way to see pediatric records; we may have missed something that came earlier but was either misinterpreted or dismissed._

_I’ve had to trade a few shifts over the next few weeks due to holidays. Going to hang on to Rosie these next few nights; you can pick her up at school Friday. I got handed some free passes to a Christmas revels thing Saturday so I’ll pick her up in the morning, around ten. Tuesday’s my day off next week, so I’ll just keep her until Wednesday morning and you can take her back to yours after her dance class that afternoon. Emma’s mother will walk them over there from school; I’ve already arranged it._

_Did you get a tree yet? Rosie hasn’t said._

Sherlock huffed a sigh out his nose. The barber laid two fingers on his temple to persuade a head tilt and Sherlock found it deeply annoying but ultimately complied. The first half of the email had given him a pleasant wash of that old familiar sensation of _getting somewhere_ ; that John was seeing the things Sherlock missed by virtue of his expertise and the particular way his brain was coded, and that it added up to _progress_. It had been ages since they’d worked a case together; their easy simpatico, the back-and-forth play of their complimentary puzzle-solving skills, even the shape of John’s forehead as he frowned over the work were all things Sherlock had greatly missed, even before John moved out of Baker Street. Working with John again had been the most pleasant two-hour stretch they’d spent together in longer than Sherlock could remember. Seeing John so engaged, reading up in his spare time, had made Sherlock smile to himself, despite himself. And then John had wrecked it.

Sherlock blew across his phone screen, clearing off specks of fallen hair. The barber pulled too hard at a lock behind his neck; Sherlock grunt-growled his displeasure.

“Bad news, Mr Holmes?”

“ _Mm_ ,” was Sherlock’s grim non-reply.

 _To:[John_Watson@UKFreemail.com](mailto:John_Watson@UKFreemail.com)_  
_From:[SH@scienceofdeduction.com](mailto:SH@scienceofdeduction.com)_  
_RE: RE: Your Case_

_Thank you for the insight. Perhaps I will look into Haitian zombification chemistry as well, since voodoo seems as likely as your primary theory of a heretofore unknown variety of epileptic narcolepsy with a side of Lou Gehrig’s disease only evident in children._

_I had planned for Watson and I to do our Christmas decorating on Sunday but suddenly find myself without access to her this weekend because your work schedule takes precedence over anything I might wish to do, and, as ever, I am a slave to your whim. It is unfair to her, and to me, that you alter the established visitation schedule at a moment’s notice simply because it is convenient for you. Watson has a right to substantive time in my care; you are not her only_

Sherlock shrugged and ducked, demanding, “Aren’t you finished yet?”

“Just—”

“My apologies,” Sherlock grumbled. “I have somewhere I need to be.” Tugging off the barber’s cape, Sherlock rose to his feet and quickly pressed a fifty into the barber’s hand. “Same time next month.” Before the barber could form words to reply, Sherlock had claimed his coat off a rack by the door and was striding onto the pavement, dropping his phone with its unsent email into his pocket and reaching for his cigarettes. “Taxi!”

 

_Well not long after I told you I doubted William and I would ever be friendly again, we got cornered by my daughter’s teacher and school administrators and were forced to be on the same team._

_Really! How did that play out?_

_Actually not bad. It was just a misunderstanding, mostly. And no matter what, I’m always going to take up for my daughter, so I may have been a little abrupt about it but. . .I imagine most parents get defensive in those situations. I wasn’t going to sit there and have my parenting questioned based on nothing much._

_Is she having problems in school? Trouble adjusting to the new parenting arrangements?_

_Maybe a bit. It was sort of a side issue, about her biological mum. Sorting out who she is and where she comes from._

_She’s in Year Two, if I recall correctly. That’s a big development milestone for every child. Lots of changes._

_Yeah, the teacher said. It all seemed like an unneeded fuss, to me._

_And what did William think?_

_Same. We joked about it._

_He’ll take up for her, too._

_He will, yeah._

_So that does sound like a bit of teamwork. That must be relieving._

_Hadn’t thought of it in those terms but yes. It’s good to know when things get rough around her, if they ever do down the road, maybe he and I will be able to work together on it. Speaking of working together, we did a bit of that, too._

_Oh?_

John thought a moment about how to talk about casework without giving them away as Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, yes, the ones in the papers.

_He was doing some research and needed me to look over a pile of medical records. We used to work together a lot, but after my daughter came along, it sort of fell apart._

_Why is that?_

_Priorities change when you have a child in the house, of course. And his work can get quite dangerous. Too dangerous for parents of small kids._

_Did you not just say he does research?_

_It’s more complex than that. The theoretical stuff is OK. The practical bits are dodgy._

_I have to ask: is he by any chance Indiana Jones?_

_Something like that. Anyway, it felt good to work with him. At our flat, at the table together. We work well together. Always did. I felt like I remembered what it was like to really know him. If that makes sense._

_It felt connecting?_

_Yeah, a bit. Yeah._

_So perhaps one source of meaningful connection in your relationship with him was the work you did together._

John took a long pause, thinking about the new phrase.

_“Meaningful connection.” That’s a bit woo-woo._

_LOL. However you want to phrase it, there are ways we relate to the important people in our lives, and some bring us together in superficial ways, some in deeper ways. Of course we also relate in ways that divide us, at times. When we feel we’re not connecting meaningfully with a partner—or anyone close—sometimes it leads to feeling shortchanged or neglected. Each person’s currency is different, too, so often in a close relationship, we need to determine not only what makes us feel good and connected, but the specific ways we relate to our partner that make him feel a sense of closeness. Is that clear?_

_It is. I’m giving it a think-over._

_It might be worthwhile to consider what’s important to you in that way—how you felt meaningfully connected to William when you were together. You may be able to integrate those ways of relating in the new, post-romantic-relationship context you’re developing as co-parents. You’re on that team together, for years to come; it might be useful to examine what made you feel connected to him in the past, and reframe it for the future._

_That’s really interesting. I’m going to think about that. I am._

_I’m glad it seems potentially useful to you. I’ll be interested to hear what you come up with, next time we talk._

John looked over at Rosie, asleep in the bed in its little alcove, from his dim-lit station on the sofa. As he readied himself for bed—chastising himself for the earliness of the hour, half-nine, like a kid—he thought about the idea of _meaningful connection_. With Rosie, he felt closest to her when they played together, and when they were quiet together, like reading to her as she fell asleep. Spending time one-on-one. When they were busy, running here and there, school, work, her activities, passing her over to Sherlock for a few nights, he really did begin to miss her. And it was times like those when he was most likely to be short with her, or sarcastic, to raise his voice and huff grim sighs through his nostrils. Roll his eyes.

Which was a thing he’d done a great deal of with Sherlock, come to think of it, in their last year or so together. Somewhere along the way he’d begun to substitute contempt for his former admiration of Sherlock’s work, his taste, his parenting, the telly he chose, the way he wore his coat. John realised he’d felt closest to Sherlock in the early days, when they were working together, and then, later, when Sherlock occasionally surprised him by taking the lead with Rosie’s care—changing a nappy without being asked, getting up for the two a.m. feed or to reassure her after a nightmare, running her bath after dinner so John could read the paper. John was white-knuckling his way through raising his girl, always, even seven years on, and to have a little of the burden lifted helped him downshift to a place where he could relax and meet Sherlock in the middle.

Sherlock’s own eye-rolling and sharp-honed tongue had come along when John once and for all gave up any involvement in casework. Certainly he’d stopped running headlong into criminal behaviour as soon as he’d brought Rosie home from the prison hospital where she was born. Later he’d stopped taking time for the sort of paperwork he’d done a few nights earlier on the premature burial case. Then he’d even stopped updating his blog. If the work, and John’s part in it, was Sherlock’s mode of connecting with John. . .

And of course, sex. Sex, when they had it—which had also been a decreasing quantity in their last few years together—was like an inoculation against furious silences and sniping at each other and made the wet bath towels on the floor a bad habit rather than a personal slight. Even tired, or angry, or a bit half-arsed about the whole thing, the sex had always been good between them. Whether their growing resentments and communication breakdown had caused the frequency of their sexual encounters to decrease, or the decrease had made them resentful and distant, John wasn’t sure. Anyway, it was all of a piece.

Obviously, having sex with Sherlock in order to connect with him was not going to be the way forward now they were living apart and moving on with their lives. But there was something to this idea of discovering new ways to interpret those happier, well-connected times, that could serve them.

John reached behind his head and clicked off the lamp beside the sofa, dug his nose into his pillow. It was an interesting concept, vaccinating themselves against the negative outcomes of disconnection. He’d keep thinking it over. Sleep on it.

 

Sherlock slid and picked the sturdy, engraved business card off the slick-polished surface of Mycroft’s massive desk, tucked it between the notes in his money clip to keep it secret and safe.

“This requires discretion,” Sherlock reminded.

“Of course. I’ll make a few calls on your behalf, but after that I shall vanish from the situation unless and until further assistance is required.”

Sherlock hummed. “By the way, I told Watson you are the father of mutant monster triplets.”

“That’s classified information that should never have left this room. I’m disappointed in you, Sherlock.”

“Do as I say, in that case, and not as I do.”

“Tell Rosamund I said hello.”

“Right. Love from Unky Mycroft.”

“Seems an adequate translation, though I can’t claim to be an expert. That’s more your area.”

Sherlock nodded, with a grim half-smile. “You should come visit,” he said.

“You wouldn’t want that, Sherlock, don’t be maudlin.”

“Watson would like it. And I find it amusing to watch you in situations so far outside your usual comfort zone. I’ll give her your number and she can text you.”

“Would she?”

Given the expression on Mycroft’s face at that moment, had he been anyone else, Sherlock would have hated to disappoint him. “No, of course not. But you should come visit, nonetheless.”

“I’ll see if I can wedge it in.”

Sherlock patted his pockets.

“There are nicotine patches in the lacquer box there on the credenza. Help yourself.”

Sherlock grumbled and gave his brother a significant frown, but he did flick the lid off the box and liberate a handful of plastic-wrapped patches on his way out of the office.

 

 _To:[John_Watson@UKFreemailer.com](mailto:John_Watson@UKFreemailer.com)_  
_From:[SH@scienceofdeduction.com](mailto:SH@scienceofdeduction.com)_  
_RE: RE: Your case_

_You can put aside research on the live-burial case; proving the cause of death will be impossible without an exhumation and there’s little chance of arranging it. Appreciate your time and input._

_Changes to Watson’s calendar are noted._


	9. Chapter 9

“Can I have your _phooone_?” Rosie whined, leaning at an impossible angle on the arm of the sofa, with the unfocused gaze of exhaustion obvious in her eyes, crowding into John’s space despite the fact the two of them had been rowing for something like three hours.

“I’m using it right now, as you can see.”

“I’ll give it right back.”

“Use your tablet.”

“It doesn’t have the _dress-up-girls game_ on it!”

She rolled and reached, helping herself, her fingers sliding over the screen and changing the ratio, losing his place. John sighed and pushed his reading glasses to the top of his head, massaged the headache out of his eyes with thumb and two fingers. “It’s not even a game,” he grumbled.

“It is too!” She stretched flat on her back on the sofa, pushing at the side of his leg with her bare feet. “I need more _spaaace_ ,” she complained.

“You’re a real treat today, darling. Is it bedtime yet?” John was sure his own eyes were as glassy as hers; he’d worked three shifts in two days while she’d been with Sherlock.

“Don’t _say_ that!” she snapped. John moved to do the washing up not only because it needed doing, but because the running water might drown out some of the whinging. “Don’t say I’m a treat and is it bedtime!” she shouted after him.

“Shh. The neighbours.”

 _“I don’t care!”_ she shrieked, and dissolved into sobs, face red, eyes pouring tears. It had been building up all afternoon.

“You’re tired, sweetheart,” John told her, feeling truly sorry for her because he had some of the same and knew what it was like. “Let’s put screens away and get you ready to sleep.”

“It’s not time!”

“It’s only a few minutes early. By the time you—”

_“Stooopp!”_

John bit down hard on his back teeth. He turned his back to her, opened the kitchen sink taps and waited for the water to heat up.

“I’m calling Sherlock,” she announced, some weird taunt in it.

“Fine, then,” John replied, his own tone purposely neutral.

“ _Stop_ , Dadda!” she sobbed.

“I said ‘fine’. It’s fine. Fine, call him.”

“I DID!”

John could hear Sherlock’s deep voice, then. “Oh, dear. What on earth is the matter, Watson? Are you hungry?”

“No, we just had dinner. Are you at home right now?”

“Yes, see? Here’s the bee picture and—I think—yes—there is Mrs Turner walking her Chihuahua around in the alley. It’s nearly half-eight; are you tired?”

John chuckled darkly and chimed in with an emphatic, “Yes, she is.”

“Stop _talking_ , Dadda!”

“Gladly.” He cranked up the taps a bit and left them to it. Within three minutes, Rosie was giggling, sounding a bit crazed, but John would take sleep-deprived and giddy over sleep-deprived and beastly, anytime.

Less than an hour later, Rosie was loose-limbed and gawp-mouthed beneath her covers, having become pliable and cooperative—downright cuddly—after her chat with Sherlock. John, himself exhausted near to giddiness, assumed a stretch on the sofa from which he knew he might not recover. After setting his alarm for the morning, he indulged an urge he knew might lead him toward trouble.

_You were the hero of the evening and I feel I should thank you._

_TXT from SH: Go on, then._

John grinned.

 _Thank you. A million times, thank you. You provided a much needed diversion from whatever that was_.

_TXT from SH: Wednesday is always difficult._

_Isn’t it. Anyway, thanks for that. BTW, how did the premature burial case finish? Or has it?_

_TXT from SH: In the end, it does seem likely the man was declared dead prematurely, unable to protest due to locked-in syndrome, and with subdued vital signs resultant from the unnamed nervous system disorder that had caused his history of seizures and narcolepsy._

_Christ. What a horror. We kid ourselves nowadays we’re more sure of when death occurs than back in the old days when they just held a mirror under your nose._

_TXT from SH: Anyway, he may have been alive when they sent him to the embalmer, but he surely would have been dead by the time that was finished.  
I met with the widow this afternoon._

_And said what?_ John felt an inward cringe, bit down hard, imagining the woman’s exchange of grotesque images of early burial for the cruel possibility her husband was aware, as his blood was drained away and replaced with a variety of toxic sauces.

_TXT from SH: I told her the doctors who had pronounced him dead certainly knew what they were doing and she should get on with her grieving, but rest assured he did not suffer unnecessarily._

_Did you really? Not like you to lie just to spare someone’s feelings._

_TXT from SH: It’s what you would have done._

John’s mouth opened as if he might say something, and stared at the phone in his hand as if it were a suddenly unfamiliar object, beaming incomputable data at him. At last he texted back, _It was kind of you._

There was no immediate reply, and as much to end the silence as for any other motive, John texted, _Have you thought about Christmas? About how we should divvy it, I mean._

_TXT from SH: I’ve been waiting to hear from you._

_Rosie keeps talking as if she’ll be at yours for Christmas Eve, for tea and gifts and that.  
But I’d been planning to have her here, and bring her to you late Christmas morning._

There was a pause, a shorter one, before Sherlock replied.

_TXT from SH: Whatever you’ve planned is fine._

Memories of all their holidays in the old flat flooded John’s weary brain, and he felt dangerously sentimental. Rosie had taught herself to walk for the sole purpose of disassembling the Christmas tree. Every Christmas Eve the three took a walk together after tea—an excuse to stuff not just Rosie full of biscuits and cakes—finally get her to bed too late with a pile of new toys by her pillow. At long last John and Sherlock settled into their chairs by the fire with wine, or whisky, and Sherlock would do that thing with his toes under John’s trouser-cuffs. They’d always exchanged gifts at midnight (or as near as they got, sometimes surrendering to bouts of yawning or dropping eyelids). Even the last Christmas, the worst one, had been cosy, though melancholy, as if it were already in the air that soon John and Rosie would be gone.

 _Maybe we could_ John typed, and bit his lips. He was so tired it felt like drunkenness. He should not be texting his ex about Christmas. What a cliché he was already becoming.

_Maybe we could do something together._

He could only bear to let it hover there for a second before frantically adding, _Mrs Hudson, too, of course. Your brother? Whatever you’d planned. Combine our two things._

_TXT from SH: Doubtless Watson would prefer it._

John was not sure of the implication. He silently berated himself for sinking into a rose-coloured memory of the three of them together at home—no, at Sherlock’s flat; _this_ was home—given how it had ended, and when. He reminded himself of the way Sherlock looked at him now, through his narrowed, stranger’s gaze. There was a wall between them, a mile high, and John had fitted in half the stones. At least half. Certainly he’d been the one to lay on the final course.

 _TXT from SH: Think it through and let me know what you prefer. I will never say no to more time in Watson’s company_.

There it was. Of course it was about Rosie. Of course it was. John couldn’t blame him; he felt the same.

_I will. I’ll be in touch._

_TXT from SH: Good night_.

 

John looked sheepish and bewildered, coming through the door from the landing. Rosie had answered the bell, and Sherlock could hear not his words but the discomfited surprise in his voice at not only having waited at what used to be his own front door, but being admitted into the house by his child. The men exchanged nods of greeting as Rosie returned to fold up on the sofa with her tablet, where she was using a medical simulation game to diagnose kidney failure. John stood just inside the door, not taking off his coat, rubbing his hands together.

“Thanks for getting her from school,” he said. “Unusual to get held up like that.”

“Something serious?” Sherlock inquired. He tugged at his shirt cuffs to even them beneath the edges of his jacket’s sleeves. At last he realised he should have invited John to shed his jacket, have a seat, but too late, so he left it.

“A bit, yeah.” John’s shoulders were tense, and his headache showed in the creases around his eyes. He shrugged, not genuinely, but because it was expected. “Well.” He cleared his throat. “Just one of those things.”

Sherlock lifted his eyebrows. Still looking at John, he gestured for him to sit while simultaneously saying, “Watson, perhaps you should use the toilet before you go.”

She made a show of protesting but ultimately agreed. Having taken her tablet with her, they both knew no matter what the physical outcome, she’d linger a while, giving them room to talk without searching for euphemisms or quick-spelling longer synonyms of the words they’d otherwise say aloud.

John settled into the red armchair with fidgety relief, stroking the threadbare spot on the right arm, though his instinct was to pick at it. He let go a sigh, willing his shoulders down, but they began creeping upward again almost immediately. “Woman comes in with three kids—one about Rosie’s age, maybe a bit younger, a boy; little girl, about two; and an infant-in-arms—and she’s already making the hair stand up on the back of my neck, you know?, before I’m halfway in the door. Her affect’s all wrong, slurring, losing her train of thought—at one point I was afraid she might drop the baby off her lap. So I step out and ask for the social worker to come.”

Sherlock waited. After a moment, he offered, “Drink?”

“Thanks. No.” John tugged at his nose with thumb and knuckle. “The toddler seemed OK, a little quiet, kept an eye on me, suspicious. The boy was hyper, all over the room, interrupting, touching everything.”

“General pain in the arse,” Sherlock summed up.

“True.” John tried to smile at the joke; it was a valiant effort. “Finally the mum says the boy’s complaining about his bottom hurting and she thinks maybe he’s having diarrhea. Soon as she catches him on the fly-by and starts to undress him I can see he’s just _covered_ in bruises—old ones, newer ones, more than just a hyperactive kid who likes to jump off the top bunk, y’know?”

Sherlock nodded. Over the years he’d come to know just how bothered John was by such cases. Abused children, addicted or otherwise troubled parents, having to call for the social worker. Once Rosie was born, his every nightmare had shifted from the scarred and bloodied children of war to the battered and bashed ones in his exam room. Flashbacks, all the same.

Sherlock already knew how the story would end. He kept it to himself.

“So. You can imagine; I’m sure you know where this is going,” John said, holding up his hands in surrender. He kept his voice low, even though Rosie was two rooms away behind a closed door. “Mum’s nodding out next to the exam table as it becomes obvious someone—no doubt her boyfriend, it’s always Mum’s boyfriend—has sexually assaulted the boy. So began the cascade of phone calls and dealing with Services people and signing statements and certifying findings and all.” John waved his hand in the air. “The whole mess.”

“The children went to care?”

“Something like that. The mum went to hospital; she went into a shrieking rage once the social worker showed up. Why wouldn’t you? Even if she somehow gets it together. . .” John sighed again, and this time his shoulders stayed down, rolled forward against the weight of the world on them. “She’ll probably never get the kids back. They rarely do ever get it together. Not in time, anyway.”

“Sorry to hear it. I know how intensely you dislike having to confront that.”

John looked at him with something like surprise. “Yeah. Really hate it. I do. Thanks for saying.”

“You know the children are likely better off. Or will be, in the end.”

John nodded, closed-eyed, looking small in his buttoned-up, thick coat. “Of course I know that’s true. But those kids don’t know it. All they know is they’re sleeping in a stranger’s house tonight—maybe not together—and they don’t know when they’ll see their mum again.”

“Children are resilient,” Sherlock offered, knowing it rang hollow. His hands were folded together on his lap.

“Yeah. But.”

Sherlock finished for him, “You know—better than most—how difficult it is for children removed from even abusive or neglectful parents. They’d rather be with their own, no matter how bad the situation.”

John nodded again, looking grim. “Yeah.”

“You did the right thing. It’s unfortunate you had to.”

“Thanks for that,” John said, his expression mildly quizzical, gaze flicking up and down as if reassuring himself it was Sherlock he was talking to. Sherlock squeezed his own hands; he had a terrible urge to open his arms to John just then, as he had many times in the past, in the wake of similar stories of bad days. But it was no longer a job for him.

Rosie saved them.

“Can we buy pizza for dinner, Dadda?”

“I can cook one at home,” John replied, forcing cheer into his voice.

“I like to sit in the shop, though.”

“Another time.” John pressed his hands onto the arms of the chair and lifted himself to stand. “Got all your gear together?” Sherlock stood, too, as it was the done thing when guests were leaving one’s home. He fetched up Rosie’s rucksack, checked inside that her folders and papers were in order, then passed it to John.

Momentarily weak, Sherlock said, “Your dad and I were talking about the three of us having Christmas together, Watson. What do you think?”

Her smile was all the reply required, though she embellished it with, “That’s just what I want!”

John looked stunned, but without a single trace of his lately usual annoyance that Sherlock was talking past him. The benefit of a sneak attack.

Sherlock reached for her and they embraced. “I can’t wait to see you again, Watson.”

“Love you,” Rosie told him, and squeezed him hard around the neck. Once they were through, John lay a hand at the back of her shoulder and brushed her toward the stairs.

“Guess I’ll—what?—email you about that?” John smirked. Good natured. If not all, then at least something, was forgiven. The spirit of giving.

“Please do,” Sherlock replied.

Rosie’s footsteps clicked down the stairs. John was shaking his head as he followed. Easily recognising a truly brilliant idea when one was shown him, Sherlock rang for a pizza.


	10. Chapter 10

_I wonder if you’ve given more thought to the discussion we had about meaningful connection in our close relationships, and how being aware of what others value in our interactions can benefit both parties._

_I did think about it, quite a bit._

_Any insight?_

John instantly thought of his conclusion that he and Sherlock had the common currency of sexual intimacy, which seemed rather the wrong answer to the question being posed, so instead related his epiphany about the value of feeling they were parenting as a team, and about how the two had often connected through sharing Sherlock’s work. He tripped over his thumbs somewhat, trying to describe working with Sherlock without giving them away as the mildly famous Detective And His Blogger.

_And I thought about my daughter, as well, that our relationship seems better when we spend one-on-one time together. We get grumpy when we’re all business._

_That’s an amusing phrase to use, regarding a child._

_Well, they do have these highly scheduled, high-expectation childhoods nowadays. I’m forever filling in paperwork. Sometimes I feel like her P.A._

_I hope you find some good in having identified ways you connected with William while you were still a couple, so that you can adapt them to benefit the present situation._

_I think I will. Thanks again for pointing that out._

_On the subject of your daughter, something I’ve noticed and I’ve wondered whether it’s purposeful, or a habit, or otherwise. You do always refer to “my daughter,” never “our daughter.” Is there a particular reason for that?_

John felt a jittery tightness high in his chest, above his breastbone. He considered his answer, letting time tick by until he felt pressure to type a response despite not really having one.

 _Do I?_ he texted disingenuously. _Never really noticed. No reason. She’s my daughter, that’s just what I say, I suppose_.

_Because—and I realise I may be pushing you here, but sometimes this process can be uncomfortable—it could be construed as asserting oneself as the primary, or better, or even only parent, when such syntax is repeatedly employed in your situation, of former couples co-parenting. It’s probably worth considering._

John’s face tingled, and he bit his numb lips. Ridiculous time for a panic attack, but his body was throwing up flags at him that one was imminent.

 _Yeah, no,_ he texted, barely able to string words together in his brain, let alone pass it off in text as casual dismissal of a grammatical quirk. _I think it maybe comes across different text-only. I don’t mean anything by it._

_I’ll accept that; there are limits to text-only interaction, obviously._

John was now stretched out on his back on the flat’s one bed, and he lifted his chest to free up air and raise his heart somewhat higher than his head—the yoga again, mixed with a dose of doctor-heal-thyself—and he inhaled to a count of four, held on for seven, exhaled eight, then texted back, _Now I’ll always notice it!_ As he was about to change the subject, his phone went.

_SH calling. . ._

John could count on one hand the number of times Sherlock had called him since he’d moved out of Baker Street. His entire body flushed hot, and felt light, and fuck this fucking random anxiety attack nonsense. John drew in another breath, knowing it was too quick and too shallow but the best he could do.

“Yeah, Sherlock, hi.”

“Everything is fine.”

“Oh, bloody hell. What’s wrong?”

“Everything is fine. I’m with Watson at Victoria Hospital A & E.”

“Got an experiment in your eye?” John asked, the half-joke soothing him.

“Everything is fine, but they do need you here to sign some papers.”

“Forgot to change your emergency contact,” John said knowingly, and already he was feeling normal-sized and the right temperature, and with all the correct sensation in his limbs. He sat up and drew his legs over the edge of the bed, thinking of where his coat and wallet were so he could go free Sherlock from the grip of the NHS, probably Against Medical Advice.

“They won’t let me in to see her. Everything’s fine. But apparently it takes more than a child clinging to you, crying, to prove parental status.”

John sprang to his feet and he swept up his coat, wallet, and house keys on his way out the door. “What’s wrong with Rosie?”

“Quite a high fever. Complaining of pain in her arms and legs. Lethargic and I think she may have been hallucinating.”

“What are they thinking? Flu?” John stamped down all the stairs and burst onto the pavement, jogging to the corner where he might find a taxi.

“They won’t tell me what they’re thinking, but yes, probably flu.”

“Christ. Victoria Hospital, you said?”

“Yes. Everything is fine, John. She’s getting good care.”

“Not fine. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

John was halfway to the hospital before he remembered his therapist.

_Urgent call about my daughter. Sorry, talk again in a few days._

 

Sherlock could not remember the last time he’d so desperately wanted a smoke, which he recognised as a final and sure sign he had gone too far, and so must give them up once more, and soon. He paced the corridor, scowling at the women behind the desk each time he passed, reminding them the depth of injustice he suffered while a child whose first word, _Nope!_ , had doubtless been carefully chosen to delight him, lay behind pale blue curtains, mumbling his name while he used two long fingers to count the cigarettes left in the packet inside his coat. The women, annoyingly, did not notice. Sherlock scowled more elaborately on subsequent passes.

It was a terrible expression on John’s face as he rushed up the hallway, and Sherlock had an intense, instant desire to repair it. Another job no longer his, in the larger scheme, but at the moment he could at least make a go.

“What have they said?”

“Nothing. You have to—”

Sherlock trailed him, a looming shadow over his right shoulder, now glaring through narrowed eyes. He knew his handsomeness punctuated such scornful expressions, and so pressed his eyebrows nearer each other. His singular focus on firing a laser of his scorn at the women behind the desk made him miss what was being said—John asking, the women too casual in their replies, John apologising—and then John was stalking away after a straight-faced young man in purple-red scrubs. It was only when yet another nobody attempted to bar Sherlock’s entry that John remembered to indicate, “It’s all right; he’s with me. With us. He can come.”

Rosie was pale-lipped, pink-cheeked, perspiring and limp-limbed, looking terribly tiny on the padded and paper-upholstered gurney. Upon seeing them—or, more specifically, John—her face fell and she collapsed into tears. He embraced her so completely she nearly vanished, just her sparkling trainers and a bit of her jeans showing. Sherlock scanned the space and quickly located the tablet computer tucked into a metal pocket on the wall, left open by the receiving nurse so he didn’t even need to guess at a password. He reported Rosie’s vital signs, and read out the notes.

“It’s flu,” John said flatly, rubbing Rosie’s wrists in each of his hands as he’d at last let her recline down again, sniffling. “You saw the letter from the school that the kids have been dropping like rain with it the past few weeks.”

Sherlock hummed. He shuffled sideways between the gurney and the wall to slide his fingertips through her hair, which she must have loosened from what he’d told himself was a pretty good Dutch plait when he’d woven it that morning.

“After they push fluids and something for the fever, they’ll probably tell us to take her home and care for her there,” John went on. “It’s what I’ve been telling people at the clinic. Vaccine’s not been terribly effective; it’s a virulent strain this year.”

“Yes, I saw,” Sherlock replied.

“Dadda, you’re too far,” Rosie murmured, sounding plaintive.

“I’m right here, darling. You’re not feeling well and it’s giving you a bad dream.”

“Too far. Sherlock’s big as the ceiling. Turn out the light, please, Dadda,” she whined, and dissolved into tears again. Both of them went into a frenzy of petting and stroking, trying to comfort her. John cooed and Sherlock kissed her forehead.

“Visual disturbances,” Sherlock said knowingly.

“Yeah. Remember when she was about five, that stomach thing that went on for days and days,” John agreed. “She had hallucinations with that fever, too.”

“Can you sleep, Watson? You’ll feel better if you have a sleep.”

“No. I want to go home.”

“Soon, sweetheart,” John promised.

Sherlock found a purpose. He made moves to duck out and shout at someone to get Rosie’s line started so they could top her up and take her home.

“I’ll just—”

“When did it start?”

Sherlock froze.

“Has she been vomiting? Came on suddenly?”

“I don’t know.”

“Got home from school OK?”

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

“She ate something. From a box. Pretzels or crisps—with taboule salad—and drank water. Watched something on the tablet. Animations.”

John was looking at him in a way that made Sherlock feel pierced and pinned. Not accusatory, precisely, but in the neighbourhood. Sherlock dug his fingernails into his palm, fist curled tight, and scanned for perfect recall of the past few hours despite knowing there was nothing to find.

“Did she complain of feeling poorly?”

“Not until later.”

“How much later?”

“Does it matter?” Sherlock was exasperated. Perhaps feeling a bit guilty. But he’d been the one refused access to their ill child while the _real parent_ was summoned; it seemed unfair for John to interrogate him; he was feeling slighted on top of worried. John should thank and comfort him, not grill him about inconsequential details.

“Yes, it fucking matters,” John said, too loud. Looked around himself at no one and lowered his voice. “When Rosie’s come down with what is—I don’t know if you’ve heard—a pretty damn dangerous flu, it matters how it developed. What was her temperature when you checked it?”

“I didn’t. Blazing. Just feel her skin, John; I knew she had fever.”

“Did you try to give her anything? Paracetamol?”

“She refused it. Then started talking nonsense, so I brought her here. It’s what you’d have done.”

“I’d have been paying attention to how it started. I’d know her temp and I’d know if she vomited.”

“I was—” Sherlock blurted, then caught himself. Took three steps back in the story and started to explain. “I have a case,” he began. “And Watson was occupied with other things. I only needed to cross-reference some topographical maps against tide schedules and—”

John did that awful grimacing grin of his, his mean streak flaring. He shook his head. “You disappeared into your own head while Rosie watched YouTube on the sofa.”

“I lost track of time.”

Sherlock, recently furious with worry and a sensation of having been left out of something rather vital to his health and happiness, understood John’s anger but thought it was not only misdirected, but out of proportion to the current situation—which was serious but not truly dire. John leaned away from Rosie, talking through near-gritted teeth.  “For you, that’s as bad as if you left her alone to go out for a pint and to watch a match at the corner pub.”

Sherlock grunted a humourless quarter-laugh. “I would never.”

“No,” John agreed, condescending. “I didn’t say you would. I said a journey into your mind palace makes you just as absent as if you had gone out the door and down the road. And while you were there, Rosie got so ill you ended up in Casualty.”

It was true Sherlock had done the wrong thing at the wrong time. He’d already berated himself, not knowing how long Rosie lay on the sofa wilting, warming, fading to pale. He thought if she’d called for him, he’d have heard, and come straight to her. But maybe not. He couldn’t know for sure.

Rosie moaned, and John turned to her, stroked her cheek. “Poor you. I’m going to make sure they get you feeling better quickly so we can go home to your own bed.”

“Will Granny bring tea?”

“No, I mean we’ll go to our flat, sweetheart.”

“I want to go _home_ ,” she whined, thin and heartbreaking. The zippy, chatterbox girl Sherlock eagerly observed in all her rapid-fire changes of mood and expression, reduced to misery and fever-dreams. Hateful.

John turned to him. “You can go, if you want. Like I said, they’ll put a bag or two of fluids in her and send us on our way, but it could be after midnight by then.”

“I’ll stay,” Sherlock replied, despite feeling it was too obvious to need saying.

“Yeah, OK,” John surrendered, though there may have been some irritation in it. “Yeah. Fine.”

 

Because Rosie was mewly and pathos-inspiring in her weepy insistence John let her convalesce “at home,” they’d fallen back to the flat in Baker Street, which Sherlock reminded with a shrug was nearer the hospital, if nothing else. Secretly he was some inappropriate blend of relieved and smug as he kissed her still-too-warm forehead and left her room so John could do the final tucking of blankets and reassuring she’d soon be well and that he’d leave her door open a bit in case she needed to call for him.

Near midnight, John was pacing the lane through the sitting room to the kitchen and back again, still wearing his shoes, looking as if he were searching for something. Sherlock, shirt cuffs unbuttoned, folded himself into his leather chair and rubbed at his temples. Headaches were rare for him, but emotionally taxing situations brought them on. He could feel his pulse in his forehead.

“Have you got anything?” John asked, and lifted an eyebrow as he gestured near his jaw. “Whisky?”

“There’s a bottle of old vine zinfandel there on the worktop; opened it last night. Only half a glass down, and it’s very good.”

John leaned and scanned until he spotted the bottle among decidedly not foodsafe glassware and retrieved it. “I’ll pour you one?” he offered. Sherlock hummed assent.

“Will she sleep through the night?” Sherlock wondered. Their voices were hushed, and the only background sounds were the occasional, distant whoosh of a passing car in the street below. John killed the overhead fluorescent as he left the kitchen to join Sherlock in the lounge; the dim of lamplight better suited the scene.

“I think so. She went right out, poor little love.”

“Late night for her,” Sherlock offered. They sat across from each other as ever they had—Sherlock wondered if he should have rearranged the chairs by now, if what had once been cosy was now confrontational—and sipped at the wine, which was thick-legged, smooth across the tongue, with intense notes of cherry and cedar.

“That’s delicious,” John praised, and balanced the foot of his glass on his knee, fingers and thumb on the stem. Once upon a time there had been ten matching glasses. John had complained about not being able to find exact matches to replace the fallen seven.

Sherlock let his head tilt, supporting his chin with his thumb, two fingers pressing hard against his temple.

“You’re all right? Had a flu vaccination this year?” John inquired.

“I’m fine. Just a headache.” He grinned humourlessly. “Worry.”

John nodded. “Look, sorry about the barrage of questions and all that,” he said, and offered a small smile of his own, apologetic, then added, “Worry.”

Sherlock waved it away. They fell quiet, each to his own worries and up-too-late thoughts, and enjoyed the wine and the quiet, ears out for any whimper or cry from the room upstairs. After a few minutes, John drained the last of his glass and stretched a bit, stifling a yawn.

“I’ll make up the sofa,” he said. “Sheets and things still in the wardrobe, I imagine.”

Sherlock trailed him into the bedroom, stopping on the way to set their empty glasses in the sink, playing the good host by insisting on finding John sheets and quilts, his own old pillows from his own old side of the bed. He hugged the bundle in one arm, layer upon layer, readying it to pass to John, or perhaps to carry to the sofa and make it up himself? Sherlock was unsure where hosting ended and butling began. John had been holding his pillow by its corner and set it on the foot of the bed.

Reaching for the stack of bedclothes, John said, “You’re frowning like mad. Head hurting a lot? Here. Sit.”

Sherlock sat. John’s shoulders were soft, and he wore a light, closed-lipped smile. He was doctoring.

Small, familiar fingertips settled against Sherlock’s temples, and he did not know where to look, so stared for a moment at the second button on John’s shirt before he let his eyes shut. Thumb pads nestled gently against his inner brow bones and Sherlock knew to let his head drop forward against them, the pressure reminding him to relax the muscles around his eyes and to smooth the tension in his forehead. John’s fingertips moved in light circles over his temples. He could hear the strands at his hairline moving.

“Better?”

“Mm.”

Repeatedly, Sherlock’s inner voice wanted to remind him in alarmed tones that this was not where they were meant to be, that John was not his partner nor even his doctor anymore. He hushed it and concentrated on the sensation of his headache draining away from beneath the skin of his face. He exhaled long and loud. After another breath, he put his arms around John’s back.

Sherlock could feel John’s spine stiffen, and his hands fell away from Sherlock’s face—Sherlock imagined them hovering in the air beside his head even as he let it fall against John’s shirtfront, one button-edge digging gently into the corner of his forehead—and John exhaled his name.

_Sherlock. . .no._

But he didn’t say _no._ In fact he followed the scolding, exasperated _Sherlock_ with a quick, soft sigh and a _Christ_ that could have meant anything. Sherlock kept his eyes closed as he was pulled and pushed, maneuvered onto his back, gripping John’s arms above the elbows as John’s wine-sweet mouth pressed hard against his own. The mattress rolled like a calm sea under John’s knee, and Sherlock parted his lips to lick into his mouth, harsher than any of their habitual kisses. John’s tongue filled his mouth, and Sherlock had to swallow.

Hovering above him, frustratingly distant on elbow and knees, John shoved a curved palm between Sherlock’s legs and dragged back and forth over his trousers, feeling for the shape of him, radiating an urgent need for response. Sherlock kissed harder, grabbed for his shoulder, the small of his back, pulling him down. John pressed his chest to Sherlock’s and kissed his jaw, nudging up his chin. He made a low, raw growling sound and scraped his teeth down the side of Sherlock’s throat. Sherlock hooked a calf into the bend of John’s knee.

Trouser fastenings were eventually tugged open, half the shirt buttons undone, and they clung hard, gripped tight, even as they wrestled into place. John was un-gentle with one of Sherlock’s nipples, teeth and pinching fingers rolling and scraping. Sherlock thrust his hands into the back of John’s trousers and kneaded hard enough to bruise. A quick fumble in the same old drawer, groaning kisses with wet, open mouths, and in moments John was thrusting against him, their hands in the way, dripping slick, knuckles bumping. Sherlock’s shoulder was pinned under John’s strong palm, fingers digging hard between the bones. Raw-throated, carelessly loud, they fucked like first-night strangers: selfish, unfamiliar, and wordless.

Sherlock was dragged along in John’s wake as he went hard after his own pleasure, the pace of his breath and the register of his moans rising, everything off-center and just different enough to challenge them both. John’s thick grunt as he came was unself-conscious, base. Sherlock slipped in his hand to finish himself; John chewed the skin of his neck. The whole affair ended in an uncharacteristic mess, half-dressed on top of the duvet, with the lights on. Very unlike them.

John rolled onto his back and they didn’t touch, not even their thighs. Not even their fingers. They let out noisy sighs, sniffing and stretching. Sherlock worried for the state of his shirtfront. John did up his trousers, then cleared his throat. At last opening his eyes, Sherlock kept his gaze focused straight ahead: most of the ceiling, the top third of the opposite wall. His rapier hung there. The bee picture.

Sudden, heavy motion beside him and a blur of blue and beige in his peripheral vision told him John was sitting up, moving aside. Going away. More peripheral motion, of John picking up the tumbled bedding they’d abandoned on the bed’s foot and now on the floor.

“You don’t have to—”

“No, I do.”

Sherlock dragged the edge of the duvet up to cover himself.

“Can’t have Rosie seeing me come out of this room in the morning and getting wrong ideas,” John said, matter-of-fact and distant, that way he had become. After a moment, he sighed quietly and Sherlock could see his head shake, in the corner of his field of vision, then closed his eyes not to see more. “Anyway, it’s not like anything’s changed.”

Sherlock could not wholeheartedly or easily say he agreed with the assessment, but as with so much of what had gone between them in the past however long (ten months, two weeks, six days since the argument that finally broke their backs), Sherlock was not in a position to argue. All the risk was his; all the authority, John’s. So in the end, Sherlock supposed in some manner he did agree that nothing had changed.

John’s voice, surprisingly close. “Goodnight, Sherlock.” John kissed him, soft and hot, half on his eyebrow and half on his skin, steadying himself with a palm on Sherlock’s chest. Kissed him again, more firmly. Left the room then, to sleep on the sofa.


	11. Chapter 11

_TO: SH@scienceofdeduction.com_  
FROM: John_Watson@UKFreeMail.com  
Subject: Christmas Plans

_With any luck this will be the last of these emails—I think I’ve got all the Father Christmas business sorted out at last. The last few gifts are being shipped to yours already wrapped so just stick them under the bed or at the back of the wardrobe until Christmas Eve. I paid extortionate rates to have that miniature-cat thing shipped in two days, but I think Rosie will be pleased. I admit I panic-bought these last few days so there will be a deluge of gifts; add that to the books you listed having got her, the movie theatre season-pass thing, and the ukulele (feel free to keep it at yours until she’s proficient, haha!), and we’ve likely spoiled her from this year forward._

_I expect we’ll be there around half-one, if that’s all right. I’ll pick up a bottle and some kind of cake thing? Let me know if there’s something specific. Oh, I’ve bought crackers, too, so I’ll bring them._

As Rosie was asleep on the bed just a couple yards from the little dining table, John had his laptop’s brightness turned down as low as it could go, squinting through his cheaters to check for typos.  He sat back and let his focus soften, gazing into the dim as he worked out how to write the next bit in a way that was definitive without being unkind. It was a delicate situation—one he and Sherlock had not discussed in the intervening days—and which must be addressed before they spent time together. Better to get it set aside sooner than later, so they could enjoy the holiday with Rosie as their sole focus. No questions unanswered; no tension in the air. Or at least no more tension than was usual.

_I’ve been wanting to bring this up, but of course it’s a bit weird. I won’t characterise that night after the hospital as a mistake— it was what it was—but I was being selfish and, I don’t know, feeling pent-up or lonely or some other thing. Obviously, the whole thing was wrong. I feel like I started something I oughtn’t have, and for that I apologise. Won’t happen again._

_I’ll let Rosie stay at yours Christmas Eve. She can stay a couple nights with you and I’ll pick her up Tuesday after my shift, so about half-three. We’ll firm it up when I see you._

Just barely acceptable, John thought, but it was awkward no matter what words he used. For all he knew, Sherlock had deleted their mistake already. John sent the email, shut down the laptop, and stayed where he was, letting his eyes adjust to the seep of streetlight around the edges of the windows. Sherlock had embraced him, rested his big head on John’s chest. And John could have played it off, thumped his back soundly as he hugged him with one arm, made some jokey comment about how they’d survived another kid-related crisis. Instead he’d pressed him backward and kissed him, and so John blamed himself for their moment of weakness. It had been strange and selfish, nothing like their usual, and in the moments after, he had a momentary, melting glimpse of himself coming back to that flat, to that bed, to that infuriating, imperfect man. But immediately the shadow of reality fell: the reality that nothing had changed, and that the end had been sheer hell of a kind John wished never to go through again. There was no point stepping backward into misery just because it was comfortable.

Indulging a lingering regret about his and Sherlock’s now final and official Last Time Together, John let himself ponder the wet way they’d kissed; the texture of Sherlock’s nipple in his mouth; the vague satisfaction John had felt when he realised there were still no condoms in the drawer, no freshly-bought packets of someone else’s preferred brand of lubricant. Not that it was his business whether Sherlock had begun dating, of course, but John had always been territorial, he couldn’t help himself.

He cleaned his teeth then curved down onto the not-quite-long-enough sofa, and gave himself a talking-to about getting sentimental. About loneliness and a need to get back out there. About how Sherlock was still all of the things John couldn’t abide, and still none of the things John had come to need. They’d have a nice Christmas Eve—presents for Rosie and tea with Mrs H, and now crackers so there’d be paper crowns and bad jokes, a proper little party—and then John would come home. At least with Rosie at Baker Street, he’d be able to sleep full-length in the bed.

 

“Sit down, Mrs H,” John insisted, quick-rinsing cups and saucers and setting them to dry.

She laid a feather-light hand on his elbow and gave him a smile. “I don’t know what’s come over me, but I’m inclined to do as you say, John.”

“Rosie, give Granny that chair, darling,” John ordered mildly, and although she neither replied nor even looked in his direction, Rosie moved off the straight-backed wood chair with its brocade cushion and onto the sofa without protest. Mycroft, in a sleeveless jumper over starched shirtsleeves—his attempt at holiday casualwear—fussed over the tea table, pouring Mrs Hudson a fresh cup. She accepted with grace but her smile was tight.

Sherlock was playing a Boulogne sonata, eyes closed, in front of the fire. _Sonata in A major_ , he thought, _for violin and washing-up, with familial chitchat accompaniment_. As he neared the finish, John cleared his throat and snapped the dishtowel before returning it to its hook over the sink.

“That’s done,” he announced, satisfied with himself, not fishing for praise but far from averse to it, should it come.

Sherlock carried on playing even as he grinned and offered, “Time for whisky, then.”

“I’ll pass,” John demurred, though his gaze was directed at Rosie as he spoke. “Holiday tube schedule; I do want to get back before dawn.” He tipped his head toward the door. The violin was drawn down and tucked safely beneath Sherlock’s arm as he itchily turned the knob that loosened the bowstrings.

Mycroft reached beneath his jumper to liberate his mobile from his shirt pocket, then frowned at the screen as he scrolled with his thumb. The frown deepened, paired with a grim hum, and he passed the phone to Sherlock.

“I know those expressions,” Mrs Hudson piped up. John stood purposelessly near the landing, having said he was leaving but not yet having left. “Have a heart,” Mrs Hudson begged, “It’s Christmas.” She directed her imploration mostly toward Mycroft, even as Sherlock crossed to the landing and swirled his coat around his shoulders.

“Behave for your granny, Watson,” he instructed, ignoring Mrs Hudson’s plea. “In bed no later than half-eight. John.” He threw John’s coat across the space between them; John lunged to catch it.

He was already putting it on by the time he caught himself. “But,” he started, keeping at the zip despite his conditioned refusal reflex. “Where are we going?”

“You’re needed. Nothing dangerous.”

“It’s Christmas!” Mrs Hudson fussed.

On the sofa, Rosie looked up from her tablet long enough to ask with wide eyes, “Dadda’s really your assist-it?”

“I need one. Come along, John; time is of the essence.”

Shocked into obedience, John followed him. Leading them down the stairs, where John couldn’t see, Sherlock bit his grinning lips. As they reached the lower landing, Sherlock heard Mrs Hudson telling Mycroft in an icy voice, “You can go, too.” Sherlock imagined that despite Mycroft’s obvious desire to make Rosie like him, he would not need to be told twice.

 

Three hours later, they trudged up the stairs they’d thundered down earlier, the still silence of a whole house asleep at distinct odds with the jangling bustle of the city they’d recently slogged through. There was freezing rain, and a cutting wind off the river, and Sherlock was certain as he bent to untie them that his oxfords were beyond saving. John’s boots had weighed him down and slowed them, but his socks were dry. His cheeks were pink and he smiled in a particular way Sherlock had nearly forgotten he had.

“Well,” John grinned, slapping his palms together, then warming them. “To all a good night, then.”

“Indeed.” Sherlock’s own smile was irrepressible; the preceding hours comprised all the best things about casework: cornering a criminal; a bit of a chase (on foot, hence his ruined shoes); a clap on the back from DCI Lestrade; and the ever-capable and sturdy John Watson at his side. Without waiting for a response to his offer, Sherlock poured whisky, then carried both glasses to the sitting room and lowered himself into his chair. As his back settled against the cushion, John arrived to claim his drink, and in another moment there they were, facing off beside the fire.

John tipped his glass in Sherlock’s direction. “Well done.”

“And you.”

They drank and grimaced and swirled the smoky brown liquid around the heavy bases of their tumblers. John’s eyes closed, long enough to slowly draw breath then softly sigh it away. The soldier, home from the battle. Sherlock slid down to stretch his legs and his back, letting his shoulders slump comfortably. The junkie, in the bliss of the fix.

“Sherlock.”

An unsettling sensation of falling, then flinging upward. He’d dozed off, drink in hand. Ludicrous. Unaccountably, Sherlock’s cheeks flushed hot as he righted himself with his elbows.

“Are you going?” he deflected, unwilling to acknowledge having so quickly and so thoroughly succumbed to the post-adrenaline crash. John’s hand on his shoulder had not been thrown off, despite the turbulence.

“Made up the sofa.” John tilted his head and Sherlock looked. So he had. “Didn’t know whether to wake you but thought, your back.”

“Thank you.” John fell away then, making room for Sherlock to stand. With his feet under him, Sherlock contemplated alternative endings, various scenarios clicking through his mind, light-and-dark, like photographic slides.

“It was—” John said then, and turned his gaze away when Sherlock met it. “Thanks for making me. It was good.”

Sherlock nodded.

“You were.” A deferential shrug.

“Good?” Sherlock smirked, though not unkindly.

“Brilliant.”

Hiding another hot flush, Sherlock turned halfway away and switched off the fire. “Thank you, John.”

“G’night then. Happy Christmas.”

“Yes. Good night.”

 

_Were you able to navigate through the holiday all right? It’s the first one since your relationship with William ended._

_Yeah, fine. In the end, fine. My daughter was happy_. Feeling annoyed by what he still felt was a false distinction, but not wanting to be forced to discuss it further, John backspaced to correct himself.   _Our daughter was happy._

_That’s important. In many ways, Christmas is for the children._

_Agreed. There were maybe a few too many gifts; I know I went overboard for fear she might be shortchanged._

_You didn’t trust William to make the day special for her?_

John felt his eyebrows pinching closer together, and he huffed.

 _Is it a problem that I feel annoyed when you call me on my rubbish?_ He so intensely wanted to be plain about it, call it what it was: bullshit. But the venue did not seem appropriate for cursing.

_Not really. It’s just something to look at. Can you say more about that?_

_Not trusting William to do the right thing as a parent. In some ways I don’t. And I’ve always told myself it’s justified because of the way he is. But you just asking me about whether I thought he’d come through put a spotlight on that. And I see it’s bullshit. Pardon the language._

_No worries. Strong feelings require strong vocabulary. To clarify, I hear you saying you have a history of distrusting William’s ability to parent sufficiently, but at the moment you’re questioning the validity of that stance?_

John scraped this thumbnail over a nick in his phone’s outer shell. Picking at something felt appropriate.

_He fumbled at first. But so did I. Of course I did. But within the first few days of having her, I just told myself to let my feelings guide me. Because I loved her so much I sometimes had to lay her down for fear I’d crush her. Or eat her. Do you have children?_

_Yes, two. They’re grown. I understand the feeling you’re describing._

_Thank god; it sounds mad, I know._

_Not to me, I promise. Go on._

_It was all the things that come with parenting: huge love, feeling protective, putting her well ahead of myself and everything else. I knew I was ill-equipped but that I’d never let anything bad happen to her._

_So perhaps your trust in yourself was a little insecure._

_Very._

_And now?_

_Slightly less insecure. It’s difficult for me to believe anyone other than me could be adequate to the task, because I barely am, and I made her._

_That’s an understandable feeling. Has it served you?_

John felt agitated and tired, suddenly, both at once.

_That’s an enormous question. I need time to think about that one._

_All right. We’ll revisit it. Back to the more practical aspects of this discussion, you say you may have overcompensated for the separation with more Christmas gifts than you might have provided otherwise; did William do the same?_

_I had told him a few things to get specifically, but he chose others on his own and she was pleased. He does want her to be happy, of course. I thought he was probably very careful about his choices, and it paid off. I wouldn’t say he went overboard. That was all on my side._

_Anything else notable?_

John smiled to himself, and the anxious sensations seeped out from under his skin back to wherever they lurked when not in use.

_We did some more work together, William and I. It was good fun._

_How nice! It seems a strong point of connection for the two of you._

_It always was. He asked me to join him again the next day, but I said no._

_Why is that?_

_He still has his same cavalier attitude toward the dangerousness of his work, which I suppose I can now say is fine for him, but I can’t take the risks he wants me to._

_Is it that he wants you to engage in potentially dangerous behaviour, or only that he finds you helpful with his work?_

John thought this over. _Honestly, at the heart of the thing, I think he just wants a playmate. For him, it’s fun. Dangerous or not._

_And for you?_

_I’m not allowed that sort of fun anymore. Too self-indulgent._

_But you do find fun in it._

John grunt-laughed aloud.

_I admit I do._

_Friends have fun together; perhaps the two of you are finding a way to be friends, in the new context._

_Yeah, maybe_ , John acquiesced, but only to put an end to the discussion. He did not want to be friends with Sherlock. He never had. Friends went to pubs and talked about nothing important. _Friends_ was miles away from anything they’d ever been together; John couldn’t conceive of it. _Anyway, it was nice not to feel angry and uncomfortable around him. I’ll look for more of that._

_How did William respond when you declined to work together again?_

_He shrugged it off. Put on his persona, put a bit of distance between us. Said he understood. But I think he was disappointed. I know him. I can tell._

In fact, John had felt a pang of regret upon his refusal to join Sherlock in chasing down a potentially-related but tangential lead on Christmas day. And then something like compassion for Sherlock; his face had gone soft for a half-second before the mask of down-the-nose aloofness was fully assembled. Probably no one but John would have even noticed it. For a moment he’d reconsidered, but then Sherlock changed the subject and opened his laptop, and John took Rosie to “the park at home” for a twenty-minute energy drain before bundling her up to leave, and that was that.

_We’re about out of time for now; please do think over the issue of trusting William’s parenting. I think there’s more there to explore, though it’s not necessarily about William._

_You’re probably right about that. I will think about it. Thanks for pressing me on these things._

_Of course. Take care, John._


	12. Chapter 12

_TXT from SH: Watson has forgotten the vital tiny cat called Topaz and requests urgent delivery._  
_Also her unicorn cardigan, which is less itchy around her wrists._  
_As for me, have you still got my wristwatch? I think I passed it to you when I was picking that lock._

 

“Stay and play, Dadda,” Rosie urged. “There’s ice cream, as well.”

John looked uncertainly at the clock on the mantel, out the window at the weather, at Rosie’s hands busy arranging an army of plastic cats into rows. Finally at Sherlock then away again toward the kitchen. “I don’t know, darling,” he began.

Sherlock put in, “Stay thirty minutes and you’ll save an hour off your journey, this time of night.” He straightened a pile of papers—spreadsheets, accounting, another dull case of embezzlement and blackmail Mycroft was using to keep him busy—and slid them into a folder, wound up the string around the tabs to tie it shut.

“You don’t mind?”

“Not at all.”

“Ice cream, please, Sherlock.”

“I’ll get it,” John volunteered.

Sherlock said faux-confidentially, “He thinks I give you too much.”

“You do always give her too much. Then there’s not enough for me.” John was joking when once he would have been scolding. Good mood—why? Sherlock checked for indications of John recently having had sex, or even a date, found none, deduced no further. Eyes red at the edges and puffy; vertical creases between his eyebrows unusually prominent. Poor sleep. Nightmares.

“He doesn’t give me too much! _You_ don’t give me enough.”

“Is none at all enough for you, Cheeky?”

“I’m not being cheeky.”

“You are a bit, Watson.”

“Sorry, Dadda, but can I have this much?” she motioned with her hands. “In the blue mug.”

“I’ll see what I can manage.”

John scooped and served, they carried on gently jesting with each other, and John got down on the floor to rearrange the cats per Rosie’s instructions until Sherlock told her it was time to clean her teeth and put on her pyjamas. With minimal moaning, she complied, leaving the two men to washing-up duty, Sherlock rinsing the spoons and John loading the toys into a basket.

“Thanks for letting me intrude on your time,” John offered, letting go a light grunt of pain as his knees straightened.

“Of course.”

The only sound was of taps running, and John looked around him, checking for strays.

“Dadda, will you read my stories?” Rosie called from the bath then emerged, flashing her teeth at them. John pretended to be blinded.

“I should really be going, sweetheart.”

“It’s fine.” Sherlock swished the blue mug, dumped the water, swished again.

Rosie took John by the hand and pulled him toward the stairs to her room.

“Only two,” he insisted.

“Three,” Rosie corrected.

“If you’re dressed for bed by a count of ten.”

“Fifteen.”

John hummed a disapproving laugh, and the bedroom door clicked shut.

By the time Sherlock heard John’s footfalls descending the stairs, he had finished the washing-up and was in his chair with the file folder full of newly-squared-up papers, bare toes of his right foot wriggling into and out of the carpet.

“Had to leave my phone so she could listen to that horrid song,” John informed him, looking apologetic.

“I know the one,” Sherlock told him.

“She was yawning the whole time I was reading, though, so I don’t think it’ll be more than ten minutes before I can sneak in for it and be out of your hair.”

Sherlock shrugged, bent his mouth into a small smile. “It’s no trouble.” He shut the folder and lay it on the small cabinet beside him. “Drink?”

John sank into his chair with his eyes shut for longer than a blink. He shifted the pillow behind his back.

“Thanks, no. Case?” He gestured at the file.

“Something for my brother.”

“Oh.” John frowned sympathy. “Sorry.”

“Something to do with illegal labour out of eastern Europe.”

“Human trafficking? You hate those.”

“Keeps the lights on,” Sherlock said with a shrug. “Keeps the brain busy.”

John nodded and they fell silent. Sherlock kept an eye on him, though John’s gaze shifted about the place as if it was unfamiliar: the cold ashes in the fire, the recently-dusted bookshelf, the threadbare place on the rug. He looked at his watch.

“Oh! Nearly forgot.” He shifted and went into his hip pocket, drew out Sherlock’s third-best, most-favourite wristwatch and leaned forward to pass it over. “Still ticking.”

Sherlock let him hover there a half-instant, then tilted to meet him. Not merely offering an upturned palm, though, he made a delicate fumble of the transaction, and let the tip of his index finger trace a suggestive slide down the inside of John’s thumb. John’s eyebrows rose and he gave another version of his skeptical quarter-laugh.

“What’s that?” he asked, far from irked. Playing along. Perhaps even right there with him.

Sherlock feigned innocence. “Hm?”

Nodding, leaning back, John rolled his eyes slightly. “Right.” He crossed his arms over his chest, a motion Sherlock knew well. John cleared his throat. “We’re not doing this,” he announced, and even shook his head. “We’re not going to be those people who muck up a perfectly workable break-up falling in and out of bed.”

“Are we not?” Sherlock replied, putting a little gilt of argument on it.

“It’s a horrible cliché. I’d like to think we’re above it.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sherlock shrugged back at him. “Anyway, why bring it up if you’re so fiercely opposed? Now it’s in the air.” He fanned his hand frantically in front of him. “Can’t ignore it.”

“Well, we should.”

They fell quiet once more, facing each other down but looking away. John drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, and checked his watch again. Sherlock, still holding the one John had returned, smoothed the pad of his thumb over the crystal bezel.

“I should go.”

“I want you.”

Sherlock confessed it with neutral inflection, a plain fact in evidence, available for blending with relevant context and general knowledge. He fixed a gaze on John—one John met, but didn’t hold for long.

“Mm. A mistake we’d best not repeat.”

“You say ‘a mistake.’ You’ve said it before. Remind me: _why_ is it?”

“Mustn’t fool ourselves into thinking there’s much of anything else between us that’s any good.”

Sherlock’s instinct was to point out that other really quite good thing they had between them—just then tucked into bed in the room above—but held it back in favour of a shrug. “You could just say no thank you.” Sherlock was unsure whether he felt rejected—or embarrassed?—but in any case he put a mild joke in his tone, to blunt the edge of the scold.

“Make no mistake, I feel the same.” John lifted himself fractionally upward in his seat, shifted, resettled. “But it’s not a foundation for anything. It’s backsliding.” He grumbled a discontented hum. “It’s complicating.”

“It’s fun and it feels good,” Sherlock volleyed back.

“Yes, well.” John cleared his throat and they shared a stare. John looked regretful; Sherlock dared him. “I’m going up for my phone, then I’ll go.”

Sherlock nodded, and waited for John to break their gaze, wouldn’t let him off easy. For the first time in their acquaintance, John Watson backed down from the challenge. He shook his head and blew out a frustrated breath, rose from the chair and went upstairs.

Sherlock went into the bedroom, slid open the lowest drawer in the wardrobe and withdrew blankets and pillow folded together specifically for the purpose, carried them out to the sofa, a silent acknowledgement that of course John was correct. But that shouldn’t stop him staying, when it was by then so late. Sherlock heard a familiar creak as John sat on the edge of Rosie’s bed, probably clearing a messy tangle of blonde hair away from her face, or stroking the soft back of her hand. Sherlock undressed, killed the light and slid between cold bed sheets with a mild shiver. He left the bedroom door open, because even though John was correct, it shouldn’t automatically stop him from crossing the old, familiar threshold, when it was what they both had by then said they wanted.

John descended the stairs into the sitting room, and Sherlock heard him sigh—a particular one that indicated exasperation—then listened to a long silence broken only by the house’s usual night-time noises of settling pipes and the occasional traffic passing down on the street. Eventually, some movement, not quite pacing, more likely John making up the sofa. Sherlock turned on his side, putting his back to the bedroom door, and mentally berated himself for being so unguarded. Handing John another excuse to grouse about his poor decision-making, to avoid ever spending time in Sherlock’s company.

John went into the bath and Sherlock flicked his eyes open just to look at the same old pictures on the wall opposite the foot of the bed, soft-lit through the frosted glass of the bathroom door. He sniffed and rustled his hair against the pillow, to not hear, to not think of John with his trousers open, just the other side of the door. He recalled silent, glaring mornings spent trying to stay out of each other’s way, taking it in turns, no shared mirror while they both shaved, no one at the sink while the other showered. Closed doors that would have once been left open, symbolic of their breakdown.

Mired as he was in a remembered dream of the worst of times, Sherlock was startled by the click of the interior door opening as the light died. John reached to swing the bedroom door shut, didn’t miss a step of the familiar journey around to the far side of the bed, even in total dark. Sherlock could make out his silhouette, heard the dull ring of his belt buckle and the shush of his jeans falling around his ankles. He unbuttoned a few buttons then worked his shirt up and over his head. His hands along his sides, catching the waistband of his boxers and letting them fall. He reached for the covers; Sherlock helped hold them back.

John did not hesitate in seeking with his small, strong hands, held Sherlock’s face and kissed his mouth, closed-lipped at first, until Sherlock offered the tentative tip of his tongue. John’s chest was broad and firm and his nipple tightened beneath the brush of Sherlock’s thumb. They whispered.

“It’s a terrible idea.”

“You said.”

“But I love kissing you.”

“I do, too.”

More kisses, in that case, and hands stroking each other’s bodies in the dark. The length of his arm. His wrist and hand and fingers. The familiar fuzz on his chest and the firm muscle of his thigh. Mouth open against his throat, tongue tracing the edge of his ear, nosing into the corner of his jaw.

“I love the way you smell.”

“I miss your hands on me. Here. Yes, that. That’s _so good_.”

A foot stroking his ankle, the perfect curve of his bum beneath a roving hand, and the long slide down the back of his thigh, fingers tucking in behind his knee and pulling to draw it up between, a tangle of legs that allowed them to be closer, chest to chest, with hands between. A gentle swirl and a soft digging-in to the hair around his prick, accidental-on-purpose sweep of fingers over the skin of his length, already half-hard, and knowing just the way to please him.

“I love this. I’ve missed it. Does it feel good?”

A roll and fall into synchronised heaving, kisses broken for want of breath, bodies meeting and retreating and meeting again.

“I miss hearing you. The sounds you make. Slide up a little; let me. . .”

No rush, now we’re here we’ve got the whole long night, rolling to his back to open his thighs, lying over him, atop and along him, slow rocking together, settling in to kiss and kiss, these lips that were so loved, this busy, bossy tongue and the way he guides and invites. Holds tight. Lets go. Tickles and tugs and cradles and scrapes. A fingertip sucked into his mouth. The tempo shifting.

“I love your body.”

“I love the way you touch me, _oh, don’t stop_ , that’s it. . .don’t stop.”

Palms licked and fingers sucked, taking him in hand with a sounds and sensations so much like relief, mouths close but not quite kissing, now and then a nuzzle or nudge with chin or nose. His low hums, his soft groaning, his fist wrapped just loose enough, sliding a twist of the wrist. Their bodies moving together and apart, panting,

“I’ve missed this. Miss you. Yes. _Yes.”_

 _“Yes._ I love to feel you come. Love to make you come. Mm, yes. . .”

Urgent and taut, a hand guiding his and his hand guiding with no need for guidance because they know each other to the core, have known each other inside and out and inside-out, for years, and forever. Quick kisses and hectic breath and, “Yes, that’s it. . .oh god yes, I love feeling you. . . _yes_ ,” and hot breath blows between them as they melt back to the present, to the place where they have always been good together, even in their worst of times.

“I miss you.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too. So. . .what do we do?”


	13. Chapter 13

_So I gave a lot of thought over the past several weeks to the idea of finding ways to connect meaningfully with William_ , John texted, feeling embarrassed by what he was about to confess—not because of any shame, but only because it seemed such a stereotypical thing to have happened—and for a moment he considered swerving to avoid it. But in truth he wanted to discuss it, pick it apart so he could sort his emotions. Maybe get a bit of advice about where to go next. He pressed on.

_And for better or worse, we connected recently. In the only way we still knew how to, by the end._

_I think I know what you mean, but especially in this format, it’s best to speak plainly, without euphemisms._

_We had sex._

_That’s what I thought you meant. Not to sound like a self-parody, but it’s appropriate for me to ask: How do you feel about that?_

_I really can’t say. It seemed like a potentially massive mistake, of course. But in the end it was good. It got quite emotional, actually._

_Cathartic?_

_No, not quite that. Connecting. We confessed to missing each other. We said we still love each other._

_I see. With a little distance from that charged moment, though, I wonder if it feels to you that those emotions were authentic? I mean to say, those words become a habit. Or intimacy can sometimes put a soft focus over less pleasant emotions, but only in the immediate term. Sometimes in a situation of reuniting with a former partner, it’s a way of having needs met: compassion, physical touch and closeness, a counter to loneliness._

_I can’t speak for William’s emotional state, but he sounded sincere; it felt honest. As for me, I do love him and always have. But there’s so much muck all around it. . .I didn’t leave for no reason. And he didn’t try to convince me to stay; it was very much a mutual breakup. But even knowing there’s still feelings there, on both sides, I don’t know if that’s enough to salvage it._

_Well certainly you needn’t rush to take decisions that might change the status quo. It’s worth taking time to think it over thoroughly, and probably have a frank discussion with William about how he’s feeling about it now. What was the immediate aftermath like?_

_We slept the night together, in his bed. Our old bed. We wondered what to do about it, but didn’t really talk it through. I fell asleep playing scenarios in my head. Next morning when my daughter woke up I retreated to the bath so she wouldn’t see me in William’s bedroom and get ideas. The morning went by quickly, focused on my daughter, no room for discussion. Then I went to work._

_And did you have another chance to talk, at some later time?_

_Not really. It was his time with my daughter and I didn’t want to intrude. A few texts talking around it—that it was something to think about; were do we go from here?—but nothing was resolved._

_Have you thought about how you want to proceed?_

_Only every minute._

_Ha! Of course. It’s a lot to process._

_I have serious doubts, really, about whether we can get past all that went wrong with us. I don’t know if it would be worth trying. There’s a load of anger and resentment. Communication was never a strong suit for either of us, and eventually it was totally, completely broken down. But then again, I think about my daughter, and I know her idea of a perfect home would be one with all three of us in it._

_Mutual love is a solid foundation for working past problems, and there are skills that can be learned, to improve communication. So it might be useful at this point for you to consider whether you’re willing to put in the significant emotional work it would take to create what amounts to a whole new romantic relationship with William. There’s a lot of letting go, a lot of forgiveness, a lot of sometimes uncomfortable honesty required to achieve something like that. Not every couple can repair a damaged relationship, even when both are fully invested in the process. If you do decide to take that on, then would be the time to consider how it might affect your daughter. I often tell couples I counsel it has to be: Marriage first, Family second, Everything Else afterward._

_I worry about the risk of resuming our old, bad habits and things just falling apart. I don’t want to break her heart again. I don’t think she’s yet recovered from the first time._

_No doubt, it’s an important issue to look at, but it really should be secondary. There’s truth in what we all hear about couples who stay together for the sake of their children only causing more—or at least different—unhappiness. Think of yourself first. Then perhaps approach William. Only after the two of you are fully invested, should you consider the potential impact on your daughter._

_It’s a lot. I worried sex between us would complicate things, and it definitely seems to be leaning that way._

_You have every option available to you; try all of them on before you settle into one._

_That’s good advice. Thank you for reminding me of that._

_Of course. Sleep on it a few nights, and we’ll talk again in a few days_.

 

Sherlock took Rosie to see a film for the sole purpose of having a hundred minutes in which to think. He bought her sweets and popcorn and the smallest possible drink so that she might not have to be escorted to the restroom midway through, and he could try to untangle his inconvenient emotions from facts in evidence so his mind could be more easily focused on his current cases—Mycroft’s horrible one about embezzling that had turned out to be about human trafficking, and just that morning a new one promising some potential excitement as Sherlock tried to prevent a set of separate-but-related bus bombings.

Relevant facts were that he and John had slept together, and had confessed enduring feelings. He supposed he could only prove the truth of his own feelings, but for the sake of simplifying a thought experiment was willing to assume John was also being genuine. In the past few weeks their interactions had been mostly pleasant, reminding Sherlock of how they’d been at their best. Which of course begged contrast with their final two years together, which had ranged from dull at best to harrowing at worst. He wondered if it was generally considered good form to weight all the years of a relationship equally; was a good year a one-to-one comparison with a bad year? Their worst year seemed to have been more intensely bad than their best year had been good. But there was the effect of time to consider as well:  the bad years being more recent perhaps had an out-size effect on the perception of overall happiness through the course of time. Though with Sherlock’s nearly-eidetic memory, if anyone should be able to sense the balance of recent bad and more distant good, it should be him. Did one bad year cancel out two good ones? Did the best years bring more benefit than the middling ones did harm?

As the film’s animated heroine swung from one candy-apple tree to another on a vine fashioned from caramel (wouldn’t it be too hot to touch, to be that malleable?), Sherlock pinched his eyebrow and frowned hard, squeezing his eyes shut. All of his mental wrangling served as a stark reminder why he had always preferred brainwork to the mysteries of the human heart. Even the workings of his own heart were utter enigma to him. John had once assured him that everyone felt that way about his emotions—difficult to categorise, tricky to name accurately, distressingly changeable, and always, _always_ more intense than those anyone else—hence communicating them to others was all but a fool’s errand. Instead of swimming about in the muck of it all, people said things like, “I’m fine. That’s nice. That’s no good. I love you.” Simple, meaningless things that acknowledged the existence of emotion without going too far into them, lest we accidentally stick our hands in too deep and spill blood on the carpet.

Another variable to weigh was the wonder and disaster of their shared history, perhaps in the end a bit of a draw, tilting toward better because it worked on multiple levels (romantic, platonic, working, addictive) and because of Rosie, who had turned them from two selfish monsters into two less-selfish monsters with a common object of obsessive love. That was the context.

General knowledge presented the fact that half of all romantic partnerships failed; theirs was not a special case, and in fact two men as intelligent as them (in particular as intelligent as Sherlock) should have known it was doomed to fail. Then again, statistics were general, and not reliably applied to any single experimental group in a given sample (as evidenced by their outlier status in several measures of the “average” couple: both men, met older, never married. Also, idiots). Relationships failed, and theirs had failed, but it was impossible to say whether they were the rule or the exception. General knowledge was clearly not going to be helpful in deducing the best course forward.

Rosie did eventually need the restroom, and Sherlock stood waiting for her outside the ladies’, tugging his bottom lip with fingertips and thumb. He was reminded of the way in which he had trained himself to assess her needs, long before she was able to reliably express them with any level of nuance (in her earliest days she had three settings: asleep, eating, and shrieking, which indicated a pressing need Sherlock then had to tick through his list to deduce). He had subdivided the complex question, _What do you need?_ into three basic questions: _are you tired?, are you hungry?, do you need the restroom?,_ each asked at intervals.

“Why are you so frowning?” Rosie asked as she emerged, automatically showing him that her hands were damp, proving they had been washed.

“Hm? Oh. Nothing. Headache.” They started back toward the theatre. “Watson, when you have something on your mind, how do you sort it out?”

She sought clarification. “Like a bothering thing?”

“Yes. Something troubling.”

“When something is bothering me, like a worry or a problem, I usually tell Dadda about it and he helps me. Or sometimes I just say to myself, Is this really a problem? Because sometimes it’s not a problem, it’s just something you think, and it’s not real, it only feels like a real problem. Thinking is tricky. Because your brain thinks things all the time, all day, but some of those are remembering, and some are imagining, and some are things you learned. It’s a lot.”

“Indeed, it can be.”

They’d reached the door to the theatre and so had to end their conversation.

Back in their seats, Rosie went into her bag of artificial-fruit-scented slow-flowing-liquid sweets and fastened her eyes on the screen. Sherlock leaned his chin in his hand, elbow on his seat’s arm rest.

 _Is this really a problem?_ Perhaps he was trying to solve a puzzle that couldn’t be solved. Missing pieces, pieces changing shape, an unclear picture even if he could assemble it. What did he need? Nourishment, respite, fulfillment of bodily urges? All of those. If sex with John as not merely a complicating mistake, what was it? An intimate bond. An easy understanding. A reminder of the two of them at their best. Perhaps proof not all was lost? The logical next question, _what did he want?_ One word, first thing that comes to mind, don’t censor yourself. . .

More. Not merely more sex, though of course that would always be a welcome endeavour, but more of a bond, more empathy, more reminders of their better natures. Sherlock wanted more of _them_. Of the two of them together.

But he had wanted that before—they both had—John, too—and look where it had taken them. John Watson was dedicated to hard work, went at it with gusto and a sense of duty, did not accept defeat easily—almost not at all. John was loyal; not blindly so, but when respect was earned, he willingly gave it and stood sturdily in defense of its object. If a man like that—if John Watson himself—had born even the slightest sense that _them_ could work out, he would have stayed loyal and worked hard. John Watson, though, had left. Not lightly. And in that case, could a hope remain that _them_ could be saved? Sherlock had trusted John since the day they met, trusted his judgment. And John had judged them a failure. Could he be wrong?

No. If John Watson had walked away—and he had—it would only have been after he knew he could not restore or repair them. Knew that all hope was lost.

Sherlock decided that no matter how much he may want it, there was no _more_ to be had.


	14. Chapter 14

Several sleepless nights and one more text-based therapy session later, John had run every possible scenario through his imagination, eliminated the impossible, and settled on the improbable but obvious choice.

“Can I take you out somewhere for your birthday?”

Rosie was on the climbing structure with her local-to-Sherlock friends—the final hurrah of her extended time with him during Christmas holidays before John reclaimed her—and Sherlock and John stood at angles to each other, rubbing their hands together against the chill.

John wanted to try. He wanted to start over, as much as was possible given their long memories of each other’s failures and shortcomings. In a late-night thought experiment, he’d cast his mind back to their earliest days, falling in love with Sherlock, losing him, hating him, falling further in love. Making a life with him. Raising a child with him. He looked at Sherlock in his best light, and with the benefit of such a flattering view, saw a man worth loving. A life worth working for. John had decided shortly after three a.m. to invite Sherlock on a date, to lay out a plan, and to ask for a commitment. Not to be John’s again, but only to try it on and see if they could make it all fit like it used to. He felt it was a fairly low-risk endeavour; they’d professed to missing and loving each other, and that was as good a place as any to start.

Sherlock pursed his lips and hummed, a downward sliding tone John did not like the sound of. What was even more troubling to hear was Sherlock’s artificially formal reply, in a register he usually saved for strangers he had future uses for and so was unwilling to offend. John’s shoulders stiffened.

“It’s kind of you to offer,” Sherlock said, sounding regretful, perhaps even actually regretful though John couldn’t be sure even after a decade of acquaintance, much of it quite intimate. “I think it’s best I decline.”

John’s instinct was to play it off casually, pretend he agreed, but having already decided the risk was worth taking, he felt a duty to stay committed. “Why’s that?” he asked, and fixed a gaze on Sherlock, which Sherlock met only briefly before looking away toward the running, giggling children, as if Rosie needed checking at just that moment.

Sherlock took a breath and held it a moment before quick-sighing, “Rosie, mostly,” he said, and it was jarring every time he didn’t call her _Watson_ , so John was jarred by it.

“She doesn’t have to know,” John parried, keeping his voice even and mild. “Not at first, anyway. Maybe we can—”

“John.”

Clearing his throat hard, John crossed his arms over his chest and took a half-step sideways. He made his own show of looking for Rosie among her playmates, half-faked a smile at her antics.

“All right, then. That’s fine. Understandable.” Before Sherlock could say anything more, John lifted his voice and called across the park, “Rose! Home time! Come on now, it’s cold.”

Sherlock took several strides away, crouching to catch Rosie as she jogged to them. He embraced her and kissed her head, and let her go.

“I can’t wait to see you again, Watson,” he told her, as she trotted up to John and slipped her hand into his. To John, not coming closer, Sherlock said, “You’ll text me to confirm—”

“Yep,” John interjected. “I’ll let you know. Should be pretty normal, I think. If anything changes—”

“Of course.”

“Bye, Sherlock,” Rosie announced, and tugged at John’s hand. “Dadda, I’m hungry. What do we have?”

“Not much, darling; we’ll do the shopping on our way home.”

“Can I get sweeties?”

“If you’re good.”

John looked back to Sherlock, standing with his hands in the pockets of his coat. He lifted one out and waved at Rosie, who barely noticed, having already dismissed him.

“Crisps, too?”

John wanted to linger, had no reason to. “One or the other, I think.”

Rosie whinged. “ _Pleeease?_ ”

“We’ll see how it goes.”

“Bye, then,” Sherlock said, to either or both of them, and turned his back. Rosie pulled John in the opposite direction.

“Take care,” John said to Sherlock’s back, probably loud enough for him to hear though it didn’t matter. He’d got his answer before he’d asked. Sherlock wasn’t open to trying again, and John was no longer in a position to ask that Sherlock justify himself. That was it, then.

“How about that cheesy chicken thing for our dinner?” he suggested, and let Rosie lead him away.

 

Sherlock turned forty-three in a bus garage in Hounslow, dressed in high-vis coveralls, wearing ten days’ growth of beard and using a northern accent only when it became strictly unavoidable that he speak at all. His brother’s deadly dull embezzling/trafficking case had been put to the side in favour of the much more compelling bus-bombing conspiracy. Time being of the essence, a deep dive in an easy disguise was the best use of his time and skill, and within an hour of his arrival he had followed threads of stilted, overheard conversation; furtive body language; and oddly-timed tea breaks to three likely infantrymen in whatever guerrilla army it was that planned to explode half a dozen city buses across London over the course of three-quarters of an hour. With one eye on his wristwatch and the other on the parts-department’s main entrance, he circled a bus with an eye to anything minute, stuck-on, wireless, as he surmised an un-jammable communication system wherein each bomb and its detonator were planted on separate rigs, lest a single failure subvert the entire mission.

He found a rolling board with a well-worn neck cushion and lowered himself onto it, slid under the jacked-up front of a bus awaiting a fresh tyre. He used his phone’s flashlight to scan for anything obviously out of place, having the previous night committed to memory several photos and diagrams available online to students of fleet maintenance for a price, or for free to determined detectives shamming to an overnight IT specialist that being shut out of the system was certain to cause a failure on an exam and hence destroy his family, future, and fortune. There was nothing obviously extraordinary, which Sherlock found mildly galling, as the bus bore registration information he was sure indicated it was one of those meant to be weaponised.

“Oi, out of there, you,” came a gruff, angry voice Sherlock recognised as the supervisor’s. “What’d you say your name was, again? You say you came here from Barking?”

 _Think quick, Holmes_ , he told himself, and wrenched his neck left and back, where he could just see two curls of clean, smooth wire wrapped in green vinyl, and shining-new screw heads, in among the general filth and rust of the world collected beneath the bus’s bonnet. Sliding himself back out onto the open floor of the garage, he refined the thought. _Think quick, but act even quicker_.

He leapt to his feet and by a sweep of his arms and force of his will, steered the supervisor and a few other bystanders rapidly away from the bus. In his usual voice-tone and accent, he announced, “Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps you’ve heard of me, sorry for the—”

“Thought Sherlock Holmes was dead.”

“—the ruse, but—did you say you thought I was _dead?”_

“No more stories online, nothing on the telly. Who are you really?”

“Not dead, only divorced. No time for the sad tale, I’m afraid; this bus is rigged to explode and I encourage an immediate evacuation.”

“What, really Sherlock Holmes? _Explode_ , you said?”

“Not immediately, but better safe than sorry. You there, who’s the emergency warden?”

“Dunno.”

“In that case, consider yourself deputised. Count the heads, everyone out. Out, out!” Sherlock waved his arms at them, shooing them, trailing as he worked his phone. “Lestrade, it’s me. Bomb squad to Hounslow bus garage, soon as you can manage. Orpington, too. I realise there’s only so many available, but there are _six_ buses in _six_ garages with _six_ bombs—all talking to each other—so I’ll leave the logistics to you, but there’s no getting around the fact the bomb squad is required at its soonest possible convenience at the bus garages at Hounslow, Orpington, Willesden, Crawley, Peckham, and one or the other of the two at Croydon—best cover our bets and attend to both.”

 

“Oh, John, are you with Sherlock?”

Mrs Hudson, clucking concern. John held the phone away long enough to let go a quick sigh before he replied. “No, Mrs H; I’m working. At the clinic.” More because he wanted to soothe her than because he was concerned about Sherlock—certainly capable of caring for himself and not required to apprise his landlady of his whereabouts every moment of every day—John asked, “Is something wrong?”

“I know he was on a case to do with city buses—grew a scraggly beard, I don’t know why—and I’ve just heard on the radio there were explosions at some bus depots.”

“Have you tried calling him?” John asked, and he did begin to feel mildly alarmed, though he was aware at times Mrs Hudson had only piecemeal information and might very well be conflating two unrelated facts. Nonetheless, he walked to the waiting room, where a television set hung in one corner. It was Sherlock’s day to pick up Rosie from school so she could be with him for his birthday; certainly he wouldn’t have been doing significant, might-wreck-Rosie’s-schedule casework a few hours before the end of her school day.

Mrs Hudson, sounding mournful: “He never answers my calls, and you always do.”

“I’ll see what I can find out and get back to you,” John told her, and a glance at the television showed him a text-crawl about explosions in storage and repair facilities for city buses. “I’ll ring you back,” he said distractedly. As he disconnected the call, his phone lit up with a text.

_Should my brother be in contact, direct him to me immediately, if you please. –MH_

John muttered a curse under his breath and checked the time.

“Mandy, can you call around and see if anyone can come in and cover the rest of my shift? I think I’ll have to get my daughter at school.”

_People are looking for you. What’s going on?_

John had nearly an hour before he would be forced to leave early to fetch Rosie; in the meantime he kept his mobile in the chest pocket of his shirt and returned to the exam room. Under the pretense of fetching a swab kit to culture the throat of a feverish pre-teen, he stepped out into the corridor just long enough to check news headlines. One confirmed fatality; multiple injured. For the first time in many years, he responded to a text from Mycroft.

 _No answer to my message. Let me know what you find out_.

 _Sherlock, for god’s sake, don’t ignore my texts. Mrs Hudson imagines you’ve been blown up_.

Ten minutes later, he checked again, between the girl with obvious strep infection, and a pensioner with a chest cough. The death toll had risen to three. There were pictures and amateur videos of a smoking metal skeleton that had once been building, fire brigades, police tape being unfurled. Across London, public transit stations were being evacuated and vehicles searched by bomb-sniffing dogs. John’s heart lurched toward Disraeli Primary School and he passed the pensioner off to his nurse.

“Sorry. Sorry,” he apologised to the office manager as he rushed past, shrugging into his coat. “I have to get to my daughter. I’ll phone later about whether I’ll be able to work tomorrow.” The office manager and receptionist gave him troubled looks but waved him on. He stuck out his arm for a taxi, then dropped into it and found two waiting texts.

_Sherlock is at Hounslow Centre Surgery. All limbs accounted for. –MH_

_Afraid I won’t be able to meet Watson after school today. Bit of a thing with a case. Apologies. –SH_

John let out a sigh of mixed relief and disgust, shaking his head. “Selfish idiot.”

“Beg pardon, mate?”

“No, nothing. Sorry. It’s nothing.” He rang Mrs Hudson and told her all he knew; she sucked her teeth and wittered worry for Sherlock until John rushed her off the line. The cab left him halfway up the road from the school and he double-timed to the yard, where students were already pouring forth after the day’s final bell. Rosie was waiting in a snaky queue of wriggling, overtired Year Twos and when she spotted him she waved.

“I see my dad,” she dutifully reported to her teacher, who looked where she was pointing and gave John a wave and a grin as she bid Rosie a good rest of the day. Rosie ran at him, and he bent to catch her; she swung in his embrace before setting her trainers back to earth. “Dadda! Why is it you today? Sherlock is meant to take me home, I thought.”

“He’s got himself—” _blown up, like a fool_ “—some extra work on a case. He said to tell you. . .” What _would_ Sherlock have said, since he had said nothing? John looked away from her probing gaze while he lied. “He said, _tell her I can’t wait to see her again_.”

“He does always say that,” Rosie said, nodding, with an almost-comical, beyond-her-years casual shrug. “Maybe tomorrow, then.”

John’s lips pressed tight together. He took her hand. “Yeah, maybe,” he replied, forcing nonchalance. “We’ll see.”


End file.
